Douglas Hackle's Reviews > Thunderbird

In the world of Jon Konrath’s hilariously transgressive short fiction—let’s call this world the Konrathverse—everyone and everything is pretty much fucked.

Yes, being a character in the Konrathverse is never a good thing. If you're unfortunate enough to be such a character, there’s a good chance that if you don’t have a daily coke or meth habit to feed, then you probably dull your reality by huffing markers or snorting Purell hand sanitizer and/or crushed Claritin. And don’t even think about eating if you’re a character in the Konrathverse. Because all the food—tacos, pizza, corn dogs, seafood, McFried Chicken McHeads, EVERYTHING—is greasy and unhealthy, if not outright rancid and toxic and ejaculated on. Sure, there’s opportunity for employment in the Konrathverse, provided you don't mind slaving it at an Indian Casino Abortion Clinic or the Enema Department of a retail store. Hobbies and entertainment can also be found in the irreparably broken world that is the Konrathverse, assuming snuff porn, national shitting tournaments, and “Introduction to Anal Bleaching” classes are your thing.

If you find yourself suffering from depression in the Konrathverse—and if you’re on the inside of this place, you most certainly will—don’t expect relief from a healthy diet (we already covered that), exercise, or antidepressants. Nay, the only possible relief is obtained through constantly faking bodily injuries in order to get regular MRI scans done of your body, as “repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation” is the only possible cure for treatment-resistant depression. Oh, and don’t count on love or sex to make things better. In the Konrathverse, if you’re not stuck in a serious dry-spell with no end in sight, then you’re likely caught in a grotesque parody of an ideal sexual/romantic relationship—or, at the very least, you’re reminiscing about a grotesque parody of an ideal sexual/romantic relationship you experienced back in the good ol’ days.

In Thunderbird, Konrath essentially writes about the same shit he wrote about in The Earworm Inception! This is a good thing, believe me. Not only that, but he continues to write about this sort of subject matter using what appears to be his signature anti-narrative storytelling structure, with a little variation thrown in here and there: The first-person Konrathian narrator initially presents you with an outrageous scene or set of circumstances, prompting the narrator to reminisce or daydream about one or two other beyond-fucked up happenings, after which the narrator typically returns to the original set of circumstances to end the “story.”

And this formula works every time—I wouldn’t have the Konrathverse presented to me in any other way. Call me simple, but if I've lost track of how many times I've laughed out loud while reading a book and I'm not even at the halfway mark, that’s pretty much a guaranteed five stars from me.