Fall 2025 Reading - Roadside Picnic

Assata: An Autobiography

By: Assata Shakur

I purchased my copy of this book at a thrift store years ago for a shiny one dollar bill and felt like I was getting a great deal, even though the cover had clearly been worked over by someone’s dog. After Assata’s death it was time to finally give it a read. Sadly, many of the most interesting parts of the timeline of Assata’s life are deliberately glossed over, and a gesture is made towards it being for the benefit of friends who may want to be kept out of the public eye. Even still, there’s plenty of details about the various prisons and courtrooms she was thrown into and out of and back into again. The paranoiac left leaning readers will get a fair taste of what it’s like for the full force of the 70’s deep-state to be aimed at destroying your life. Any other kinds of reader will at least remember the time they had to drive on the Jersey Turnpike and be able to associate the feelings of deep evil they experienced with some historic loci.

The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

By: Seth Harp

This one will put the fear of god into the aforementioned paranoiac left leaning reader. The bumbling COINTELPRO era goon squads of yore have been transmuted into the elite pipe-hitters[1] of the modern era. I borrowed my copy off of a friend, which was for the best. By the time you’re halfway through the book you’ll be feeling itchy at the thought of having your credit card number linked to this purchase, even at such an honorable institution as the penguin random house website. That might be an exaggeration, but at a certain point in this book claims are made that the tier one operator IT network filled with the dork equivalent of pipe-hitters[2] are capable of seeing you through your TV screen.
I know this can’t be true. You know this can’t be true. This simply does not make sense. Yet by the time you’re reading this, a voice in the back of your head will say ‘Hold on, these guys are watching me through my TV?’[3]. The stuff in this book will leave you dazed. USA super soldiers with x-ray vision who can leap over buildings in a single bound, but with one secret weakness[4]: they’re addicted to telling their wives about all the crimes they do and then filing for divorce. Many thanks to Seth Harp for putting himself in the unenviable position of position of boots on the ground investigator into the deranged underbelly of the operator pharmaceutical complex. You hate to imagine what couldn’t make it into the finished book. Highly recommend.

[1] Crack smokers

[2] Once gain, these guys call themselves crack smokers as a compliment

[3] In all fairness, the author doesn’t appear to believe this, but does quote someone who makes this claim. This intentional leading of the audience happens a few times and leaves you spinning if you don’t pay quite enough attention to catch it happening.

[4] I hate to repeat myself, the weakness is of course the crack smoking.

Hunger

By: Knut Hamsun

This one I picked up during my recent trip to Sweden. Unfortunately the photos I took never made it through Nordpost and are trapped in the circle of limbo reserved for Scandinavian mail that someone was too cheap to spring for tracking numbers on. I accept this is some form of divine punishment for being an analog film hipster. My Knut and Tove Jansson’s Sun City thankfully made it back safely in my carry-on.
If you’ve read Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground this story will feel familiar. Where Dosto’s Underground Man is driven by self-obsession into behaving as annoyingly as possible, Hamsun’s protagonist becomes more schizophrenic in thought and deed as he is thrown into deeper poverty and immiseration. The townspeople’s obliviousness to the protagonist’s anti-social behavior and increasingly decrepit appearance, and the increasing distance between the character and the reader lead to sickening encounters where passer-by become trapped like bugs. During which, the protagonist is confessing his thoughts to you and begging for pity. As the story goes on you feel the pivot to repulsion as you shift from witness to a secondary hostage. A classic for a reason, I’ll give myself some time before I read Victoria.

Crash

By:J.G. Ballard

A masterpiece. 200 pages of crashing your car, preferably into human beings, for sexual pleasure. Every time I merge onto the highway I’m certain a deranged car fucker is trying to kill me to get their rocks off. The car is evil and will make you evil, and if one of these freaks crashes into you you’ll leave the hospital and find yourself mimetically infected with the same urges.
Fun tidbit, this blog’s namesake appears in the book:
“— pleasant images of young couples in group intercourse around an American convertible parked in a placid meadow; a middle-aged businessman naked with his secretary in the rear seat of his Mercedes; homosexuals undressing each other at a roadside picnic; teenagers in an orgy of motorized sex on a two-tier vehicle transporter, moving in and out of the lashed-down cars;”

∵ Redrick Schuhart ∴ 2025-11-12