Razor Wire Pubic Hair

I remember hearing about this book back in 2009. I had wandered out into the living room of the trailer I shared with my Mother and her Life Partner to read the last book in "The Dark Tower" saga. My Mom's partner was looking up books by Christopher Moore on Amazon and had happened to stumble on some Bizarro works hidden in the recommendations. As she explored the different titles and did some outside research on Bizarro at the same time, the name Carlton Mellick III popped up several times. I now own many of the books she read the cover blurbs of by Mr. Mellick and now thanks to the celebration of my 25th year of life I have got my hands on another work by this legendary underground master of the freaky.The premise of this book is this: A man made love doll is purchased by a sadistic dominatrix with the titular body hair for the purpose of having a baby. In this world men are now long gone and roving bands of rapists roam the barren landscape. Into this world, the love doll Celsia-2, who is named after her master, must try to find her purpose as the world begins to crumble around her and those around her fall into their own psycho-sexual hell.Right from the first sentence you automatically get sucked into this disturbing landscape. Like his other work of supreme unease "Ugly Heaven" Mellick strings together different parts of speech to describe things that do not go together. This is a staple of his early work and it may seem hard to get past or even off-putting to those who try to read it. Those people however, are not the kind of people who read Bizarro anyway and are probably better off reading the latest James Patterson or Daniele Steel. For those of us who are looking for fiction outside the limits of the mainstream, this is a perfect book for you.Besides being a quite sexually charged book, this is also a work of haunting and disturbing beauty. Mellick gives the narrator, Celsia-2, unique voice. She is both haunted by the world around her and fascinated by it, her innocence almost child like in the face of the depravity and savagery she faces on a routine basis. You kind of feel sorry for her and I think that is what CM3 wants us to feel for her. He also wants us to examine our own world, and it's its own repressed sexuality and the standards it places on women. He lays bare our social norms and presents it to us raw, bloody, and still breathing. This is a dangerous book and that's what makes it great.So if you are willing to take a chance, pick this book up. You'll come out covered in cuts, but that's par for the course. Besides, would you expect anything less from the Godfather of Bizarro? I thought not!

I love this book. I REALLY REALLY love this book. It's gorgeous, horrific and moving.It was one of the earlier Bizarro books that I read, and it's the one that's stuck with me the most as I've continued to read more in the genre.This book is not in the style of most Bizarro novels, and definitely not in Carlton Mellick's usual style either- it's quite experimental. Not Finnegan's Wake or William Burroughs experimental (meaning there are actually sentences in Razor Wire Pubic Hair, and they make sense), but experimental all the same. The book uses a flitting, fleeting dream-style of very poetic prose not dissimilar to Samuel Beckett to place the reader inside a world that doesn't exist- but is such a strange parallel of our own subconscious that we care about it, are fascinated by it.This book is about sex. Strange sex, violent sex, extreme sex, and plenty of at least somewhat-unwilling sex. But that doesn't make it porn, and really doesn't make it erotica either. (I didn't find it erotic in the least, but that's not to say that someone else MIGHT- I'm sure someone WILL in fact).The book is set in a world ruled by women- who all have the personality and characteristics of dominatrixes (and the type who like LOTS of blood). 'Male' members of 'society' are not really people- they're artificially engineered sex-toys, for the purposes of pleasure, amusement, and occasionally procreation. They are not treated as thinking, living people who need to be respected. The story is told from the point of view of one of these sex-toys, kept past its original use-time to serve as a continued plaything for its brutal owner.This is a dividing book- some will insist upon attributing lots and lots of meaning to the book and its topics (sex, male/female relationships, feminism etc), while others will see it as little more than a sick BDSM fantasy set in a sad, dreamy dystopian society. Both are quite correct, and both are wrong. I guess it's really all how you read, who you are, and what you're looking for. It gives YOU what you give IT. Either way, you will at least get a thought-provoking read with some truly beautiful scenes. This is one of the two Bizarro books that have made me cry (the other being Jordan Krall's Fistful of Feet).It won't be everyone's cup of Bizarro Tea, but it should be experienced all the same. VERY highly Recommended."This book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out."- Lichtenberg as quoted by Robert Anton Wilson

Mellick's books have been recommended to me for years, so I finally decided to give him a try and chose "Razor Wire Pubic Hair" to be my introduction.The book -- with its large font, blank spaces and drawings, it's a short story at best -- lives up to its hype of being strange and violent, but it's all facade. Under its simple prose about bleeding flesh and odd beings and "multigendered screwing toys" and giant vaginas embedded in walls, there's no real story or substance. I'll admit that a lot of this is inventively weird, but it amounts to little. In his note before the story, Mellick tells us he wrote this at 23 ("in dream worlds"), and it does has a certain edgy tone, but I was never completely sure what the point of it all was, or if Mellick really had a point.I think the disappointing thing is that the stage is set for an interesting apocalyptic BDSM bacchanalia. The world we're given is an intriguingly odd one, and we hear a lot about its people and its enemies and even its undead, but I don't think we ever really get to explore them in a meaningful way. And I would have liked to.I don't agree with others who think Mellick went the "disgusting for the sake of disgusting" route. In fact, most of the images here didn't disgust me at all. (Though one scene in particular, featuring God, will make Catholics vomit all over themselves.)I liked "Razor Wire" enough that I might give Mellick another shot, but the book does feel like a promising but underdeveloped tale.

Di tutte le opere che ho mai letto di Mellick, questa è forse la più strana.In un futuro post-apocalittico in cui l'intero genere maschile si è estinto, e gli esseri umani superstiti vivono in palazzi fatiscenti di città in rovina, vestiamo i panni di un dildo ermafrodita mutante dotato di autocoscienza, costruito a scopo riproduttivo. Ma il nostro protagonista viene dato in "pasto" a Celsia, una donna vorace e completamente egocentrica, che se ne servirà per i suoi giochetti. Questo, finché l'appartamento in cui vive non sarà attaccato dai barbari stupratori delle wastelands, precipitando la vita del povero dildo nel caos più completo.Nonostante i miei tentativi di ricostruirla, si può quasi dire che "Razor Wire Pubic Hair" sia un romanzo senza trama, più affine alla Literary Fiction e al surrealismo che non alla narrativa di genere. L'intero libro è più che altro un susseguirsi di scene vivide e bizzarre, che colpiscono l'immaginazione e ogni tanto lo stomaco. Per carità, degli avvenimenti succedono e c'è una certa progressione degli eventi; ma questi eventi sembrano avere quasi più funzione 'allegorica' che reale, sono più un giocare con le immagini che una catena di fatti che da una premessa portano a una conclusione. Il risultato è molto lynchiano, ma anche molto deludente per chi si aspettava una vera *storia*.Accettate queste premesse, bisogna però dire che qui Mellick scrive davvero bene. Le immagini che evoca sono estremamente vivide, materiche. Si visualizza senza difficoltà tutte le stranezze e le nefandezze che il povero dildo si trova a subire per opera di Celsia. Alcune situazioni sono molto suggestive. E il contrasto tra la voracità di Celsia e la riluttanza del protagonista è resa molto bene (e colpisce perché suona atipica).Insomma: lettura estremamente insolita, e per certi versi deludente (soprattutto rispetto ai romanzi più tardi di Mellick); ma al tempo stesso, non lascia indifferenti.In ogni caso, è sicuramente il meglio del "primo" Mellick.

No es un libro recomendado para todo público, tal vez ni siquiera para el lector de bizarro habitual. Pero quien quiera una lectura explosiva, alocada y extrema, su búsqueda ha terminado.

carlton mellick rocks!