Fiction. Features stories by Sherman Alexie, James Franco, William T. Vollmann, Megan Abbott, Jerry Stahl, Beth Lisick, Jess Walter, Scott Phillips, James Greer, Tao Lin, Joseph Mattson, Natalie Diaz, Kenji Jasper, and Rose Bunch. Speed: the most demonized—and misunderstood—drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet speed—crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, spizz, chickenscratch, oblivious marching powder, the go-fast—is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all. It feels so good and hurts so bad. From its dueling roots of pharmaceutical miracle cure and Californian biker-gang scourge to contemporary Ivy League campuses and high school chem labs, punk rock clubs to the military-industrial complex, suburban households to tin-can ghettos, it crosses all ethnicities, genders, and geographies—making it not only the most essentially American narcotic, but the most deceivingly sundry literary matter.
Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA
For years Joseph Mattson was a rambler, working as a farmer, fisherman, dishwasher, short-order cook, getaway driver, blood donor, home healthcare worker for the developmentally disabled and the clinically mentally insane, playing punk rock music, and too much more. He is the author of the collection of stories Eat Hell (Narrow Books) and EMPTY THE SUN: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance (A Barnacle Book/Drag City), which were the #1 and #10 best-selling Book Soup paperback fiction books of 2009, respectively, and is the editor of Two Letters: Collection of Art & Writing, Vol. Two (Narrow Books) and THE SPEED CHRONICLES (Akashic Books), an anthology of original fiction about the drug speed. Mattson's award-winning poetry and prose has been published in Ambit, Slipstream, Pearl, and dozens more, and EMPTY THE SUN is currently a finalist for the 2010 SCIBA Fiction Award. Mattson has also been shortlisted for DZANC's 20 Writers to Watch list, an alternative to The New Yorker's 20 under 40 list.
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