We Are Billion Year Carbon: A Tribal-Love-Rock
Novel set in the 60s on an Outpost Planet called Memphis
“It’s a beautiful, quirky, spooky, rhythmic,
hilarious and sneakily moving piece of work.”
M. Allen Cunningham, author of The Green Age of Asher Witherow
“Corey Mesler’s exuberant, spaced-out
love letter to the 1960s—and to his hometown of Memphis—gives renewed meaning to the phrase, “Far out!”
Invoking the ghosts of Richard Farina, William Kotzwinkle, Richard Brautigan (who appears!), and Thomas Pynchon at his most
whimsically stoned, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, with its cut-and-paste assemblage
of poems, stories, and memoirs, deftly captures both the innocent charm and the dark menace of the period. “
Marshall Boswell, author of Alternative Atlanta
"If this was music, it'd be a
slippery, jazzy 'Green Onions' with a sitar break played by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, using the edge of his dictionary for a
pick."
Marshall Chapman, author of Sweet Little Rock and Roller
“This book is best approached
as poetry: playful, allusive (and often elusive too), with a distinctly hippie sensibility, which veterans of the Age of Aquarius
will recognize instantly, and which will give other readers a vivid sense of those bygone, patchouli-fragrant days. Indeed,
this book is perhaps most accurately described as a literary version of that Sixties-specific phenomenon known as a “Happening”:
there’s a lot going on, it’s often colorful and entertaining…{and}a good time was had by all.”
--Peyton Moss, ForeWord Magazine
“Imagine The Crying of Lot 49,
mixed with Richard Farina, mixed with early Rolling Stone magazine pieces. Think about the playful word play of poet and playwright
Tristan Tzara. Mesler’s work here is like taking a hit of acid without experiencing the possible longterm aftereffects.
Well, maybe…”
George Singleton, author of Novel
“Tying all of these disparate elements together in one big tie-dye, Mesler's prose and verse swirl psychedelically,
making use of obscure words like paralipomena and clerihew, as if learning to speak a new language. He possesses
an easygoing, slightly stoned wit: he refers to a character's canvas as being "like those paintings by that painter" and describes
a memory as "strained through the cheesecloth of time." Overall, his writing possesses a noodly quality, as if each sentence
were either a guitar solo or some hippie variation on square literature. [Mesler’s] '60s may be perhaps equally rose-colored,
but in Carbon the times seem much more personal and idiosyncratic than generational. In fact, at times this amiably
ambitious novel -- especially the poems, which read as later-in-life ruminations by any one of these characters -- often reads
like Mesler's attempt to reclaim a personal past from the mass-market memories of flower power and Woodstock. He's fighting
against the public demystification of the past, desperate to unmake certain connections, to leave some things unexplained.
As Camel observes, ‘Mysteries ... were beautiful as mysteries.’ Far out.”
--Stephen Deusner, Popmatters
“Mesler’s language is spare and excessive—a contradiction held and delivered by humorous and graceful
syntactical arrangements. These are narratives which give visibility to the cracks from which versions of Self erupt. Since
‘home’ (thus returning to it) is destabilized by a shifting sense of Self, Mesler reveals nostalgia as the poetry
of the thwarted attempts which expose how awful, awkward, and endearing humans can be when ripped open by the complexity of
history. Mesler invokes nostalgia to engage with the difficult issues it creates…It’s a fragile enterprise—how
we coordinate our identities with history, how we then come to terms with versions of ourselves. We are Billion Year Old Carbon suggests that it remains a worthwhile experiment.”
--Selah Saterstrom, Ellipsis: Literary Serials and Narrative Culture
“[A] sexy and energetic novel-ala-collage…As
energetic as the beginning of this book is with its unfettered adventures and engorged dreams, Mesler is at his best describing
the end of an era…Billion Year Old Carbon is a bold and often humorous tribute
to the brave and foolish times of galvanized youth.”
--Susan Henderson, Arkansas Review
And a nice review here in the new issue of Ghoti: http://www.ghotimag.com/reviewmesler.htm