Book Review : Brian Alan Ellis - The Mustache He's Always Wanted But Could Never Grow (2013)
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Brian Alan Ellis is probably the most talented aphorist in the world. At least, he’s the very best I know of and by a far margin. His work seamlessly blends nostalgia, irony, loneliness and popular culture in a way that makes you feel less fucked up. Ellis is so great at one-liners, it kind of overshadows his more conventional fiction. I had only read one of his collections before picking up The Mustache He’s Always Wanted But Could Never Grow.
It was a mistake. Ellis is pretty great at doing the normal thing, too. Perhaps not as great as he is at one-liners, but his short stories will make you appreciate his aphorisms better.
The easy thing to do when reading Brian Alan Ellis would be to call him a nihilist. It is not what he is. Although his stories lack positive resolution, they don’t stress that nothing is important and they are not an direct manifestation of his beliefs. They are allegories for feelings of anxiety, heartbreak and worthlessness, which are emotions that bind us all. Unlike nihilists, Ellis doesn’t condemn. He rather seeks meaning and connection in a cold and cruel world.
If I sound like a tweed jacket-wearing snob right now, it’s because I’m trying hard to. Ellis’ short stories have literary value. He’s offering something legitimately different and exciting from the MFA eggheads out there. But here’s a more tangible way to appreciate what I’m talking about: the great majority of the protagonists in The Mustache He’s Always Wanted But Could Never Grow want something immaterial they can’t get because they live in a world where people are too busy surviving to appreciate intangible things like art, beauty and emotional connection.
A no-good dreamer, that Fred; he knew from an early age that to go through life he would have to rely solely on his imagination. Everything else, he thought, was so damn disappointing (The Waiting, p. 90)
My favorite story in The Mustache He’s Always Wanted But Could Never Grow is The Waiting, where a protagonist named Fred locks himself in his bedroom, smoking cigarettes and waiting for something he cannot define, like in the Cake song. What you’ll eventually find out is that Fred is haunted by the idea of loss itself. That he feels inadequate to keep people in his life and hates the idea that relationships come and go, so he prefers the predictability of his room.
I particularly liked The Waiting because of its Dostoevsky-ian edge. It is obviously influenced by Notes from Underground, but the protagonist hasn’t quite given up on life.
The opener Crumbs of Love exposes a different side of Brian Alan Ellis’ longing for transcendence. In that story, the protagonist is a poet who’s girlfriend curses him for not having higher ambitions in life than writing his poetry. There’s emotional urgency a self-denigrating sense of humor to it, but it doesn’t quite feel real and I believe it is on purpose. It reads like the play-by-play of a panic attack. An anxious scenario that you play on repeat in your mind.
Other stories I liked best were: Eulogy for Johnny Thunders, where the protagonist keeps asking for a moment of respect he can’t get for his dead cat; Loco Mask II, where the protagonist’s love for pro wrestling invades his personal life in unexpected ways and Delia Done Wrong, which… is about the devouring need to feel appreciated and taken care of, I guess? They are stories of characters looing for beauty and transcendence in the wrong places.
Brian Alan Ellis is one of these writers who’s simply born in the wrong era. If he’d lived in the 60s, his seemingly autobiographical characters would’ve been a lot happier and would’ve found this transcendental fulfillment in other sensitive and optimistic dreamers. But he’s a millennial living around people who are always broke and worried about paying rent rather than changing the world. He’s very much the Jack Kerouac of a sketchy neighborhood.
I liked The Mustache He’s Always Wanted But Could Never Grow. Perhaps it’s a little dark on the surface but the deeper you get into it, the more you’re confronted with Brian Alan Ellis’ idealistic and heartbroken vision. Although I slightly prefer his aphorisms, I do think that Ellis would be better appreciated by larger audiences if he gave his readers a little more hope. But you can’t give what you don’t have. Although I’m sure Ellis would try to.
7.4/10
