Document Zippo

by L.A. Ruocco

Art/ Fiction. "In an age where most artists blend in and sell themselves out for a quarter, Document Zippo is more than refreshing, it is shocking and exhilarating"-John S. Hall, from the introduction. DOCUMENT ZIPPO, like Ambrose Bierce's DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, is "an onomasticon, hard at work in the fields of consumerism, language and dread." Sexual, authoritative, and probing, the mind of L.A. Ruocco is "awfully alive" in this book that is at once an artist's book, a flipbook, an intensely personal narrative, and a catalogue of the blemishes and scars on our late-20th-century culture. The numerous narrative threads in the book range from digestion to designer condoms, progressing through linguistic play, varied typefaces, and pictures. "In an age where most artists blend in and sell themselves out for a quarter, Document Zippo is more than refreshing, it is shocking and exhilarating." John S. Hall"

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Ben]

What a bizarre, confounding, one-of-a-kind book. Rating it was tricky. [And proved futile, see below.]

The sections that read the most like (what I generally expect from) a quote-unquote novel strike me as the best, moving between playful metafiction, sexual/scatological obsession, unexpectedly raw emotion, and *the most hilarious* sense of weirdo neurotic humor.

There's also a great deal of (for me) semi-unreadable, quasi-ironic pomo academic jargon, experiments with form (poetry, sections written like a script, etc.), typographical and photographic trickery, etc. Did I mention that this is a three-part 'narrative' modeled on Dante's Inferno?

If the notion of artistic creation as excretion sounds intriguing and you like novels with footnotes this may be the book for you.

Postscript: Maybe I shouldn't have rated this book after all... Some parts are very memorable, haunting even, but I kinda forced myself to give it [redacted rating] because I did end up skimming or even (gasp!) skipping through some parts and I *never* do that. Hmm...

Postscript Part Deux: Can't stop thinking about the impossibility of rating this book. Original rating redacted. New (non) rating: Ø [zippo] stars. Also note that this book contains the unforgettable phrase "mountains of diarrhea" ..(!)

[LaRuocco La · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am the author of this book & at my first book-reading at Barnes & Noble of which i invited Liza Minnelli whom i'd friended upon meeting at outpatient rehab therapy in a group with Elizabeth Wurzel before she killed Infinite Jest that David Foster Wallace, sorry, I promise you there are no run-on sentences like this in Document Zippo, every line is pristine cutting preseason; upon this first book signing, I had a seizure. I soon after absconded the country from Bangkock to Kathmandu , & have not been able to show myself in public for 20 years. ....That's how real it is.
My photog friend Maurice Nar-cîs didn't get any shots of Liza, his explanation is that it was because I was foaming at the mouth.
I just remember tho, even after, & of being the one to think of it, writing Zippo, that moment of Liza riding in the Ambulance with me, & Michael Portnoy showing up & chasing keeping up so we were watching him being his Jokey Jokester self on his bicycle that is the single most fabulous moment I have to share with my 2 daughters, of the Stuntdouble. whoopes Im supposed to be writing a review for someone else, sorry Steve, Stephen C. Bird this time its: To Be To Is To Was ©2018 xo La Ruocco, also known as Laruocco La Ruoc & co. Enterprises, formerly published by Soft Skull Press.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This girl is kind of crazy and she's obsessed with her butt.
If you like Karen Finley...

[Bill Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a hand-made copy of this book ‘signed’ by the author, from back in the glory days. I’m still not sure what to say about it. I confess I once thought I was avant-garde but now I think I was only fooling myself, a double agent. I’m still terrible at improv. Perhaps this could be the unity of the paradox - I was an outsider on the inside. I may want to write more about this but I’m still digesting it, nearly thirty years later, yes. I would like to take a more scholarly approach, but my personal experience keeps getting in the way, my attempts at humor as a defense mechanism against self-awareness. A lot of puns suggest themselves in this regard, like for example I would recommend this for bathroom reading. You can pretty much open it up at any page and find some type of shock aimed in the general direction of the bourgeoisie. This distinction of insider/outsider keeps reproducing and re-entering itself. The avant-garde presents as the ultimate outsider subsystem of the social system, yet reveals itself through collaboration amongst a select, elite group of insiders. This work is of course in the tradition of W. S. Burroughs, yet from a female perspective, which is in itself transgressive of the avant-garde tradition. Burroughs infamously shot and killed his wife, which - as the poet Robert Graves suggests in his own study of the Goddess - could be viewed as a terroristic (sinful) attempt at Socratic ‘self-knowledge’. Here the psychic system operates at the most basic unity of self- and other-reference, obsessed with biological systems the operations of which, in many ways, are generally excluded both from polite society and consciousness.