I’ve been trying to write a review of this chapbook for three days now. There is more than one reason I have been unable to do so. Here is one. Here is another. And still another. And another. In short, I’ve been a little busy. But that isn’t all, that would be a bad cop-out, because it’s not like anyone’s really been demanding a review of this book, so why am I justifying something that wasn’t even bothering anyone in the first place. It’s wrong that more people are not interested in this chapbook, which I will get to. All of this is beside the point. I think every review needs some kind of preface, some context, of what led the reviewer to his or her conlclusions. And so here I begin.
I ordered this chapbook in July sometime. I remember I ordered it about the same time that I commissioned the book “bad poetry” from noö journal. I was attracted to the idea of having something signed by the author. It had been quite awhile since I’d purchased anything like that. Well, like a month passed, and neither of these things I’d purchased had come yet. So I sent an angry e-mail, and it goes as follows:
from P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com>
to author@aboutjatyler.com,
Mike Young <mike@noojournal.com>
date Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 2:46 PM
subject You TwoMake the small presses look bad. What the fuck, who do ya’ll think you
are? Between you I spent nearly $30, only to not see any product at
all or even an excuse for a delay. Fuck you guys.
Tyler was very diplomatic. He said, quotationally: “phm.
sorry there hasn’t been a shipment of my chapbook to you yet. the printer is unable to send me my next batch of copies until monday. I wish I had copies to send sooner. do you want me to refund your money?
j. a. tyler”
I’m glad I didn’t ask for a refund. I didn’t need the money at all at that time. I was just looking forward to both 
items, and was pissed they hadn’t come yet. Mike Young sent the chapbook that night. The product suffered by my rushing. And oh well, that was my fault. Tyler’s chapbook arrived not long thereafter, and so I felt almost like an asshole. Generally I’m an asshole anyway. I had rushed him for something that I wouldn’t end up reading for another month.
I took it with me to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisinia. There my unit had plenty of time to do almost nothing, and so I read the chapbook more than once out there. I didn’t read as much as I should have. My fire still was out. It didn’t rekindle until probably last month or so. And oh well. That’s the way it goes, being a writer, I think. You have these months where you just don’t care. If you’re not careful, they’ll stretch out.
Tyler doesn’t seem to have those months, though. If you look at the guy’s publishing credits, this has been his most productive year. And good for him: the “industry” needs more people like him, the daring and the productive and the bold, moreover, the original.
That is what this chapbook rings as, for me, original. It didn’t read as a piece of prose for me. The reason I’ve been struggling with reviewing it is because it doesn’t feel like a piece of writing that I need to react to, no, it feels like thoughts inserted into my head. His writing is methodical that way, more generally. His prose may seem hard to get into, but you just have to let go. I feel like he knew that character well. The worksmanship of the prose is something to be admired, really. I took down notes in my last three readings. I say three because it’s the kind of thing that I don’t feel like, “fuck, I have to re-read that line because I stopped paying attention.” Like I said, it feels almsot like a real-time dream, thoughts inserted into my head via the page. In no ways is it standard, and I doubt it has been done before.
What’s it about? It’s vague, at least, in subject. But it comes through. It’s a piece of writing that is very much a wholesome read–you can’t read just the beginning or just the middle or just the end. I’d say it’s not linear that way, although it is ordered as linear. You don’t mind re-reading lines, because the imagery is sharp and fierce, drawing you along in ways that other writers just don’t have the ability to do. It is clear that countless hours went into the composition of this piece, and so it’s no surprise that Trainwreck Press snapped it up for distribution. I don’t know what their submissions process is like, but I’m sure they hand out their share of rejections, like any little press. I feel like they probably got the better end of that deal.
So, now, I’ll get into the actual prose that I am rambling so much about. It deserves some analyzing, even if it probably couldn’t be dissected by even the worst cynic.
The girl in the black sweater is basically an infatuation of a guy who hates his wife and his life. It comes through that he probably met her at a bookstore, but the verbs and motion give you a carsickness that prevents you from being sure of anything. It’s very easy to get into the mind of the character; “mood comes through clearly.” The girl in the black sweater is “a black sweater and perfectly formed calves.” Interesting description of a woman, that, and he goes on, throughout the book, to describe her ever-more cleverly: “a bud of morning” whom he is “showering [...] eating [...] sleeping [...] living [...] and thinking [of]” with “curled hair bound to beautiful shoulders” [and] “maybe she was just an infatuation for the time being” [but] “she was lounging and long” [and] “she was always there.”
The character is apparently experiencing great distress over the course of this chapbook. He can’t deal with his pillhead wife or maybe non-existant daughter, he wants something young and fresh, and he finds that in his obsessive crush on this girl in the black sweater. Maybe she didn’t love him, he says, but she still existed, I gather, and that’s what matters to the truly infatuated.
For five dollars you can buy this from Trainwreck, and for I think like eight bucks you can get a signed copy from Tyler himself. I’m in between about which option would be better for you. Either way, I say if you want to read some truly groundbreaking fiction, in the sense that I have never been so fully immersed in a piece of writing while at the same time having the freedom to think otherwise (because it’s like I’m having these thoughts that the character is having, and so my mind is tricked into having other thoughts and wandering, which is a strange sensation and, as I say, new to me), then get this chapbook. Stop buying useless shit on eBay,
buy something from a small press like The Girl in the Black Sweater by J. A. Tyler or anything from his very cool mud luscious press. And if you’re not sure about this, then just either google him or look at his specific list of publications, and do some research. I believe I’d reccomend any of his pieces of writing to anyone interested in him, which is not something you can say for a lot of writers out there.
In closing, I’m glad I bought this chapbook, and I hope someday to write something on its level of depth and originality.
