Kill Kill Faster Faster

oey One-Way doesn't believe he'll ever leave prison, until hotshot producer Markie Mann pulls strings to spring Joey after he's served 17 years for killing his young wife. While in prison, Joey has written a play that has since become a Broadway sensation. But when Joey falls for Markie's wife, Fleur, there's real trouble.

From Publishers Weekly

Meet Joey One-Way: junkie, murderer, ex-convict. And the newest and brightest celebrity writer in the U.S. Rose's second novel (after Kill the Poor) is a satire of contemporary America, land of opportunity even for convicted murderers. While in prison for killing his wife (the mother of his twin daughters), Joey wrote a play about his experiences. The play became a Broadway hit and was optioned by a big-time Hollywood producer, who has worked the deal to spring Joey early so that he can write the screenplay. Staccato rhythms and street vernacular give the narrative a genuine, manic music as it tells of Joey's life on New York's streets, in prison and among the media elite as he has a fling with the wife of his producer sugar daddy. Though initially alluring, the rapid-fire voice (even when it adapts grammatically to a third-person point of view) never breaks free of the tight confines from which Joey sees the world. The satirical elements work best when they approach the ridiculous but don't cross the line. Rose's acid view of a celebrity- and media-driven society comes through in the mere setup of the book. But it runs into a cul-de-sac of the obvious when Joey begins talking about the World Wide Web and subsidiary rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The pace is relentless, and the descriptions are brutal. Sex and death drive the narrative from page one. That they occur in such liberal amounts?and that both author and narrator seem to derive so much pleasure in the telling?makes it hard to differentiate this novel from the hype-drenched landscape it purports to satirize. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

In prose that shifts from standard English to urban black dialect, Joey One-Way tells of his fall and rise and subsequent fall. After 17 years in prison for killing his wife, Joey is released into the custody of a film producer who wants him to write a script of the play he wrote in prison, which became a Broadway hit. Joey gets involved with the producer's wife, broods over present and past guilt, and comes to a shockingly unexpected end. Rose's first novel, Kill the Poor (Atlantic Monthly, 1988), is also set on Manhattan's Lower East Side, an area Rose knows well. This cinematic look at the urban underside portrays characters through graphic sex and language but makes them hard to forget. For large collections and those interested in experimental writing.-?Roland C. Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Library, CarbondaleCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From Scientific American

A gritty, raw murder mystery, a dark erotic love story, a pulpy hard-boiled tale of sex, drugs and crime on the streets. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

oey One-Way doesn't believe he'll ever leave prison, until hotshot producer Markie Mann pulls strings to spring Joey after he's served 17 years for killing his young wife. While in prison, Joey has written a play that has since become a Broadway sensation. But when Joey falls for Markie's wife, Fleur, there's real trouble. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

Kill Kill Faster Faster should be set to a pantherlike Lou Reed bass line: It's one of his songs come to life as a novel. It's very, very good and -- even more unbelievable for a Lower East Side novel --- IT'S REALLY HARD TO PUT DOWN! If the whole downtown sensibility seems to have become as dry and weightless as old newspaper lately, KILL KILL redeems it with a sorrowful beauty. Joey One Way, Rose's narrator, is the new voice of downtown, one who knows how to sing in many of the old voices of that terrain -- ex-junkie, barrio literary hipster, mournful poet, jailhouse diarist, noir detective. Joey has just got out of jail for killing his beautiful black wife in a junkie fever 17 and a half years before and he's scared and jittery. There are other characters -- Markie the producer who gets Joey released from prison to work on his TV projects, and Fleur, Markie's girlfriend, who is soon Joey's lover. I'd like to say the rolling paper-thin dimensions of both Markie and Fleur result from an addict's self-absorption, but the truth is Rose just isn't up to fleshing them out. His eye is on Joey. As a result Kill Kill Faster Faster is pretty much a one-shot deal. There isn't much development -- our narrator's relationships to both Fleur and Markie are basically the same in the end as they are in the beginning. But Joey's entrancing rap fills up the book. Joey spend it's 212 pages trying not to be driven crazy by (a) &@!! (specifically the lovely Fleur's; (b) memory; and (c) desire for some kind of salvation. The prose is colloquial but with a flourish: "And what am I angry about?" Joey thinks. "You know, I don't have a clue. Not a clue. Or I ain't talking. One or the other." It also has the drum-drum-drum rhythm of a drug craving. It gets in your blood. Rose has been an Alphabet City literary fixture for years -- he cofounded the literary mag BETWEEN C&D (set to be relaunched this fall) and wrote a previous novel, the cult fave Kill the Poor. With Kill Kill Faster Faster, he emerges from the direction of Avenue D walking like the baddest white boy seen around here in years. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

The editor emeritus of New York's Lower East Side (and the author of one previous novel, Kill the Poor, 1988) here tries to cash in on the post-Tarantino trend in nihilist/killer coolness for this tale of a Jack Henry Abbott sort--an ex-con who writes his way out of a life sentence only to end up back in the can on a bum rap. Joey One-Way, ``a walking aberration, a talking negotiation,'' serves over 17 years for killing his adulterous wife, who was ``light, bright, and almost white.'' As narrator of this supposedly transgressive narrative, Joey establishes his street credo early on, both with his ungrammatical ghetto dialect and his boast of tearing off a jail rapist's testicles. Joey's jailhouse masterpiece, ``White Man Black Hole,'' lands him a job ``juicing up'' scripts for a Miami Vice-like TV show set on Manhattan's mean streets, on which Joey is ostensibly an authority. Joey's pent-up aggression finds expression in a number of ways: He slashes a street punk in the face, he breaks a beer bottle over the head of a Maileresque writer at a cocktail party, and he enjoys lots of steamy sex with the wife of the man who arranged his release, the show's producer. Joey's so cool that he not only talks funny (``Joey smell death''), but he can't believe how lame all the upscale heroin users are in Manhattan (i.e., junkies ain't what they used to be). A stunning display of artsploitation, this self-styled shocker will probably suffer the fate of such books: Those who would be shocked aren't likely to read it. But if they do, they'll discover that the biggest con here is not Joey or his producer, but the novel itself. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Joey One-Way is fresh from prison after serving 17 years for the murder of his wife. He's been released through the efforts of a hot TV producer, Markie Mann, who has optioned Joey's successful, prison-written play. So, fresh from a New York state pen, Joey is whisked by limo to Manhattan to be a screenwriter. Joey owes Markie--big time--but he promptly falls into a torrid, twisted, and obsessive affair with Markie's exotic ex-con wife, Fleur. Joey and Fleur both agonize over their betrayal but do nothing to end it, and the reader knows that any resolution will be a grim one. This quintessentially postmodern New York novel won't be everyone's cup of tea. Its milieu, characters, and voice are down and dirty; it's written in a first-person black dialect in which Joey, who is white, frequently refers to himself in the third person and tosses off malapropisms and little-used words in equal measures. But it's also a compelling novel with flawed and fated characters worth coming to know. Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

JOEL ROSE has co-authored graphic novels, his journalism has appeared in the New York Times and he has written for several television shows including Kojak and Miami Vice. He established and co-edited the legendary literary magazine Between C & D, and his first novel was Kill the Poor. He lives in New York City. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Reviews

News