The Condemned by Noah Cicero

Were you ever drinking one night and thought, “I would like to kill myself, but I just don’t have a good reason. I wish my daughter would get hit by a car or I was a ground troop in The Iraqi War so people would say after I did it, ‘He had his reasons.”

From “Civilization” as included in The Condemned

Keep Going. When you land in a passage about a pregnant woman snorting cocaine and eating pussy, keep going. When you get halfway through a scene involving load blowing and load swallowing, keep going. Beauty exists at the end. And it is the rare beauty that informs everything prior.

Noah Cicero has a way of bringing the most seemingly asinine and gratuitous scenes in to sharp focus with just a single paragraph or sentence. Take for instance the story “Gratuitous Kink The Immaculate Cherry Popping,” in which a long list of the protagonist’s sexual exploits is capped with the passage: “In most meaningless sex acts only one of the people has the motivation for a good time. Most of the time one person needs a psychological need fulfilled.” In one direct punch Cicero justifies the assumed gratuity, informs the protagonist, and opens theme all while keeping the momentum strong. In most hands Cicero’s subject matter would be perverse (Bizarro anyone?). In Cicero’s hands the perverse is simply a method for developing great characters.