Amidst oppressive home and school bullying, an isolated awkward young boy conquers his fears while constructing a giant woodland fort in the memoir Saturated Chaos. The fort is not the background to the typical uninteresting boy to man story we hear ... Read more

Amidst oppressive home and school bullying, an isolated awkward young boy conquers his fears while constructing a giant woodland fort in the memoir Saturated Chaos. The fort is not the background to the typical uninteresting boy to man story we hear too many times (fucking boring, I get it). The 'lost boys' at Fort Bean altogether skip the maturation course that average people experience to become productive members of a civilized society. Instead of learning from deviant behaviors, their anti-social mores are positively reinforced. Behaviors include: shitting on each other (literally), sweetening coffee with human semen, mailing human shit to their school principal, killing a skunk with bare hands, playing games with guns named kill Jesus the escaping jew, and occasionally setting homes on fire. Saturated Chaos is a philosophical, funny, coming of age memoir that includes similar self-deprecating humor as used by David Sedaris or Jenny Lawson with one large difference: Elliott, the protagonist in this manuscript, is fully developed as a character through a continuous story. The manuscript was inspired by the style and humor found in books written by Augusten Burroughs. The book is not composed of multiple short stories placed under a single cover. The voice and story builds and flows like a fictional novel. Elliott begins as a relatively normal, God-fearing, rule-abiding, and lonely kid who by the end of the book questions God, defies rules, and leads a group of extremely deviant young men. The account of bizarre events that happened to Elliott in his average to dull mid-western sub-division in the 1970's and 1980's will certainly draw interest, empathy, and laughter from the person who can relate to the odd-duck getting shit upon (literally). During the ages of 7-14 he was raised by his mother and step-father in a home where few words were voiced; silence became his nemesis. The current draft of the memoir includes approximately 72,000 more words than were voiced in that home. As a cry-baby ballet-dancing-wanna-be twerp, he befriends a local overweight bully two years his senior who nicknames him Jesus and without knowledge he teaches Elliott the Socratic Method: to ask the question Why? Like Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, each developed story promotes the reader to question religion, rules, and the taboo. Without his bully friend's aid, Elliott creates a fort out of scraps he pilfers from local junk yards that raises 3 stories tall. He details the fort to include electricity, a potbelly stove, dance floor, sound system, nuclear shelter, a 6' high wall surrounding the fort (designed to stop the bullets from an invasion of pinko commies), garage for the members motorcycles and weapons (multiple shot guns and rifles), and an 8mm projector to view stag films. The place becomes a society for young boys becoming men to accomplish and learn nothing considered by normative standards to be good. The members of Fort Bean know no boundaries. The funny but serious memoir describes the memory of torment, destruction, and the real taste of shit (really) in the creation of a culture that does not respect the rules of civilization. Less