Poison and Antidote

By Cody Lee, Reviews Editor

This foggy, angst-riddled delve into the underbelly of ’80s San Francisco acts as a sedative for those arty-farty solipsists who think that they’re the only ones to feel heartbreak, and the ongoing excruciation of life: you’re not alone . . . well, you are, but so is everyone else, really.

Poison and Antidote: Bohemian Stories by Lee Foust intertwines nine stories, all of which resemble the lives of your local waitresses, meth-mouthed pseudo-rockers, and performance artists who drink blood from crystal chalices.

Foust jumps between first and third person, and even switches the characters that speak in first person, which can come off as confusing at times (I’m still trying to figure out who’s speaking in the last chapter . . . I have my bets on a fellow named Lee (Ding! Ding! The author’s name!) but I’m still not 100% certain; my book’s marked up with two too many arrows pointing to names, and strikethroughs), but that’s the excitement in the adventure: by reading, and peeking into the thoughts of these unsure young adults, I became a part of the story, too, wandering around the hookered, and unencumbered streets of California for a moment, only to put the book down and return to reality: the world of classwork, work-work, and sleep/repeat.

It’s evident that this novel’s a byproduct of Foust sitting down in front of his computer, opening up Microsoft Word and spilling out the beautiful (and sometimes oddball) workings of his hyper-inventive mind. This comes across in Poison and Antidote’s anarchic content, and structure, too; Foust chooses to incorporate a movie script; he chops up select chapters into italicized, page-long preludes—typically composed of surreal dreamscapes (e.g. “In this crowd I grow two more faces—I’m surrounded) and old-bearded-man-glued-to-a-rocking-chair wisdom (e.g. “Remember, everything has the potential to be the most painful thing that you’ve ever felt, but the numbness you force on yourself in its place will rob you of even that”).

Poison and Antidote is filled with quotables, and I can go on for pages, but rather, I highly recommend that you, personally, read this über-observant, and visceral look at Foust’s San Fran: the land of the free, and the home of Dead Kennedys.

September 11, 2017