Some time ago I stumbled upon an entirely new genre of literature. While searching for a Sonny Rollins disc on Amazon, I happened upon the following customer review of Saxophone Colossus:
“Among the finest jazz works ever. Typically, I order mayonnaise as my condiment of choice on a sandwich. But after my cat’s death, I can’t seem to come to terms with mayonnaise anymore. Silly right? It’s not like I blame mayo for my cat’s death — I think it has something to do with the opening of the jar. “Buttons” would always run into the kitchen if she heard me opening the mayo jar. But now, I open the jar and there’s nothing. Just me and my empty apartment. My life didn’t really end up how I thought it would. I thought for sure Sonja would say yes when I asked her to marry me and I’d have a better job. But she looked so disappointed when I asked that I knew that she was going to choose Greg instead of me. He was already successful and had his own car. I was an aspiring writer, not much to bank on there. Now years later, I’m still aspiring, while she’s driving a big Mercury SUV. Sonny Rollins rocks.”
Had this customer — who goes by the name “Navy Bean” — perhaps had a small psychotic break in the midst of assessing Henry Rollins for Amazon? Was he perhaps a doomed poet, condemned to wander the wrong genre until he found love? I was impressed. I began to wonder about Navy Bean. Had he published outside of amazon.com? Well, this I don’t know, but what I do know is that he has published considerably more within amazon.com. When I clicked on “see all my reviews,” I found that Mr. Bean had, as I say, created an entirely new genre of literary text: the small confessional narrative, hidden within the Amazon merchandise review. The review of Rollins has since been removed — I am proud of having saved it for posterity — but the following small masterpiece still appears on the page devoted to Welding Metallurgy by Sindo Kou.
“But don’t most of us already know the basics of metallurgy? It reminds me of the time I saw my brother smoking cigarettes behind the garage. He had stolen them from my mother and didn’t really seem to be enjoying himself. But he smoked the whole pack. As he finished, I thought to myself, “what a loser.” But the fact was I had sat there for 45 minutes watching him smoke all those cigarettes. So, I guess I was even a bigger loser. A moniker that stayed with me most of my teenage life. I didn’t dislike school, I got to see a lot of pretty girls that would never have sat next to me anywhere else. I didn’t get good grades, as I was addicted to after-school cartoons like Tom & Jerry. Even well into my teens. If I see them now, I watch them in totality looking for what appealed to me when I was younger. I can’t find it. “
While Bean’s Welding Metallurgy review is to be commended for having attached itself to such an inspired book, I do find that it represents a decline in structural nuance: Bean’s Saxophone Colossus review returns, in the final sentence, to the actual merchandise at hand — if nothing else, this is a more successful attempt at hiddenness, which is the essence of all esoteric writing. And the Beanian narrative is, most certainly, esoteric.
Perhaps Bean’s most successfully esoteric piece is the tender Stiletto T114MC Titanium, Milled Face, Curved Handle Framing Hammer. Here Bean employs the circular structure so powerful in Saxophone Colossus, yet — in a subtle twist — makes the deviant narrative relate, tangentially, to the merchandise reviewed:
“Great hammer. Makes me yearn for the days when putting up drywall and drinking brew were a carpenter’s obligation as much as his desire. Nowdays, you get these wannabe carpenters staying lucid and not double charging. Frankly, they’ve ruined the industry. I mean, I try to keep an open mind and all, but there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to look in the mirror and take stock of himself. I don’t judge a man by his choice of friends or what he does when he’s not at work. But golly, if you’re a carpenter, be one. Great hammer.”
For a moment, the reader believes that he or she may have just read an actual review of the Stiletto T114MC Titanium, Milled Face, Curved Handle Framing Hammer. (Which is $69.99, and ought therefore to be a pretty fine hammer indeed.)
I must confess, however, that I found the actual sentiments expressed in Stiletto T114MC Titanium, Milled Face, Curved Handle Framing Hammer a touch less moving — less deeply considered, in fact — than those apparent in Bean’s finer efforts. While it stands as a superb example of hiddenness, Stiletto T114MC Titanium, Milled Face, Curved Handle Framing Hammer remains a slight opus — a triumph, finally, of mere technique. Compare it with the delicate The Massacre ~ 50 Cent, surely the most affecting piece in the Beanian ouvre:
“50-Cent is the grooviest. Early in my life I thought for sure I’d find someone who’d love me and I could love back. It hasn’t worked out that way. I’ve had a spell of bad luck that seems to have lasted for years. I hate my boss and I have thoughts about quitting, but fear grips me and I can’t do it. My gosh, what a failure I am. Working 35 hours a week, going home to an empty apartment, no friends. Heavy debt. My only outlets for creative expression are my synthesizer and watching late-night TV. Though I always wake up in a bad mood ’cause I stay up watching 1980s sitcoms that I didn’t even like the first time I saw them. 50-Cent is the real deal.”
This small jewel has also disappeared from the Amazon site. If I accomplish nothing else with this blog, I will at least have rescued this piece. That will suffice.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this body of work. Navy Bean has issued in a new era — not simply in genre, but in means of publication. We may soon see entire epic poems lying coyly hidden within CNET reviews; picaresque novels masquerading as users’ comments at various software sites; haiku inserted into responses on this very blog.