Slack Jaw by Jim knipfel: a Review.

 

Slackjaw by Jim Knipfel it gives me some heavy old-testament-style prophet vibes, that is what this man gives off. Like a punk-rock Ezekiel.

There is a darkness and dangerous honesty to Jim's observations and an honest sense of peace that overwhelms his world even when he is punching out windows.

All you really need to know though is Pynchon gave it a kind if not an outright glowing blurb. and all readers at this point in the century should know whether that is enough to give this book a read or not. The rest will be somewhat rambling on my part.

There is an irony in gaining a kind of ruthless clarity of morality while he was going blind. That for me was the central metaphor for the book, how loss and paint burn away the dead wood of our souls. Yet there is always something more to throw into the fire. and the light from that burning of us illuminates and facilitates change.

Though in no way is it romantic, unnecessary pain is a reality whether we want it to be or not. the process of its distribution seems to take no account of simple concepts like fairness or justice on this plane of reality.

"even in the worst of lives, lives in which it seems nothing has gone as planned when everything is in shambles, there are moments right and lucid moments, which for some reason that is never clear at the time, remain with us forever. Good moments when, for only an instant in the big mess, everything seems right." That is exerted from SlackJaw... When I read it for the first time in my early twenties my life was falling apart and I was in a hopeless place. Yet for some reason that book changed me (Not as much as when I discovered scripture and sat down and read the bible) but in a secular human way connecting and excepting the results of others' decisions as the measurement of our lives: it was cathartic.