We Are Billion Year Old Carbon

We Are Billion Year Old Carbon. Corey Mesler. University of West Alabama: Livingston Press, 2005. $14.95 (pa.) $27.00 (hb.) 1-931982-62-7, 1-931982-61-9.

Mesler describes this book as "A Tribal-Love-Rock-Novel Set in the Sixties on an Outpost Planet Called Memphis." He also refers to it as a "collage," so let's use that one, since it's shorter and doesn't involve having to type so many dashes.

Mesler has pasted poems, stories, music reviews and stories-in-dialogue together into a character study of Memphis in the Sixties. One of these stories, “The Growth and Death of Buddy Gardner,” was included in Best New Stories from the South 2002. It follows the career of a Clapton-esque musician who started well, and then fell into the mires of acoustic folk music. It’s very clever and I can understand its success. Many of these pieces have been published widely online and in print.

The pieces are arranged chronologically, so that they move in time to show the progression of the Civil Rights movement and counterculture of the Sixties through the changing lives of a counter-culture coterie. The poems, by and large, are attributed to a poet named “Camel Jeremy Eros,” a pivotal character who dances through the stories, etc, in this book. Whereas the stories, etc, often act as sort of still life snapshots of the Sixties, these poems chronicle the emotional progression of the era, and serve to punctuate the larger pieces.

One of the more interesting structural experiments, “It is Not Dying,” chronicles the obsession of a fan for the Beatles. It is told entirely through a series of album reviews written by a critic burgeoning and disintegrating right along with the group he is growing to appreciate.

I think one of the best, and most encapsulating stories, is “Camel Jeremy Eros and the Ghost of the Piggly Wiggly,” in which Eros has run out of bananas (whose peels he likes to smoke) and goes to Piggly Wiggly to get more. And you can guess what he encounters there. This story (chapter?) has a mythic quality. Eros encounters true horror, when all he wants to do is get high, which, in some respects, could be emblematic of the awakening of social awareness many people underwent in the Sixties.

This book is anarchic and free spirited, and Mesler lays it all out for any skeptical readers: “Those expecting rising action, falling action, the abecedarian of plotlines or character development, the author/reader/work triad, are going to walk away shaking their heads.” I think he is being hard on himself. I found the book thoroughly enjoyable, and very accessible.

-CL Bledsoe


	We Are Billion Year Old Carbon We Are Billion Year Old Carbon. Corey Mesler. University of West Alabama: Livingston Press, 2005. $14.95 (pa.) $27.00 (hb.) 1-931982-62-7, 1-931982-61-9. Mesler describes this book as "A Tribal-Love-Rock-Novel Set in the Sixties on an Outpost Planet Called Memphis." He also refers to it as a "collage," so let's use that one, since it's shorter and doesn't involve having to type so many dashes. Mesler has pasted poems, stories, music reviews and stories-in-dialogue together into a character study of Memphis in the Sixties. One of these stories, “The Growth and Death of Buddy Gardner,” was included in Best New Stories from the South 2002. It follows the career of a Clapton-esque musician who started well, and then fell into the mires of acoustic folk music. It’s very clever and I can understand its success. Many of these pieces have been published widely online and in print. The pieces are arranged chronologically, so that they move in time to show the progression of the Civil Rights movement and counterculture of the Sixties through the changing lives of a counter-culture coterie. The poems, by and large, are attributed to a poet named “Camel Jeremy Eros,” a pivotal character who dances through the stories, etc, in this book. Whereas the stories, etc, often act as sort of still life snapshots of the Sixties, these poems chronicle the emotional progression of the era, and serve to punctuate the larger pieces. One of the more interesting structural experiments, “It is Not Dying,” chronicles the obsession of a fan for the Beatles. It is told entirely through a series of album reviews written by a critic burgeoning and disintegrating right along with the group he is growing to appreciate. I think one of the best, and most encapsulating stories, is “Camel Jeremy Eros and the Ghost of the Piggly Wiggly,” in which Eros has run out of bananas (whose peels he likes to smoke) and goes to Piggly Wiggly to get more. And you can guess what he encounters there. This story (chapter?) has a mythic quality. Eros encounters true horror, when all he wants to do is get high, which, in some respects, could be emblematic of the awakening of social awareness many people underwent in the Sixties. This book is anarchic and free spirited, and Mesler lays it all out for any skeptical readers: “Those expecting rising action, falling action, the abecedarian of plotlines or character development, the author/reader/work triad, are going to walk away shaking their heads.” I think he is being hard on himself. I found the book thoroughly enjoyable, and very accessible. -CL Bledsoe