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And Every Day Was Overcast
"This illustrated novel about growing up poor near the swamps of South Florida has a lurid vibrancy. Its prose is lit from below, like a vaguely scummy in-ground swimming pool, and the author’s photographs—of ranch houses, randy adolescents, alligators, drug paraphernalia, fishing tackle, convenience stores—are what you might get if you combined William Eggleston’s talents with Terry Richardson’s. 'My hometown, Loxahatchee, was built over Seminole Indian burial grounds,' Mr. Kwiatkowski writes. 'In exchange for land we inherited bad conscience. It was in my blood.' His book is full of young people, seen as if from a passing Camaro, having a good time and trying to get out alive."—
New York Times
, Holiday Gift Guide, Dwight Garner
“A completely original and clearheaded voice.”—Ira Glass, host of This American Life
"We finish And Every Day Was Overcast in a delirious state of disassociation, not unlike the kids whose lives it seeks to evoke. This, of course, is why we turn to books—or one reason, anyway—to see the world as we have not before. The shabby suburbs of And Every Day Was Overcast may not be unknown to us, but Kwiatkowski’s ruthless excavation give us a new language by which we hear stories that might otherwise go unheard."— The Los Angeles Times , David Ulin
Photo-Eye Best Books of 2013 (Selected by Doug Rickard)
“A tale of trailer parks, drugs and teenage construction and destruction, Paul K has brought forth an American diary hugely personal and partially universal. Through skillfully written prose and raw imagery that's authored, found and stolen, we witness the protagonist's young life on display. It's not pretty nor should it be. A scrapbook of intention and carefully put together pieces, we witness elation and pain and the special concoction of America's ‘Florida’ in all its glory.”
“Kwiatkowski’s novel succeeds in doing much more than simply conveying the isolated experiences of one idle teenager with a penchant for drugs, pornography and reckless sexual encounters. Through a marriage of images and words, the novel illustrates the result of adolescent malaise against Florida’s eerie, subtropical backdrop."— Fault Magazine
"With aesthetic conviction comparable to that of Harmony Korine, this alternative novel is sure to have you nostalgic and reaching for the cheapest brand of beer you ever got your teenage hands on."— Nylon
“I can count on my fingers the number of great books that seamlessly mix photographs and literary text in a compelling way. Paul Kwiatkowski’s And Every Day is Overcast not only achieves this rare feat, he does so with an artistry that makes the achievement nearly invisible. . . A landmark in visual storytelling.”—Alec Soth
Out of South Florida's lush and decaying suburban landscape bloom the delinquent magic and chaotic adolescence of And Every Day Was Overcast. Paul Kwiatkowski's arresting photographs amplify a novel of profound vision and vulnerability. Drugs, teenage cruelty, wonder, and the screen-flickering worlds of Predator and Married…With Children shape and warp the narrator's developing sense of self as he navigates adventures and misadventures, from an ill-fated LSD trip on an island of castaway rabbits to the devastating specter of HIV and AIDS. This alchemy of photography and fiction gracefully illuminates the travesties and triumphs of the narrator’s quest to forge emotional connections and fulfill his brutal longings for love.
Paul Kwiatkowski is a New York-based writer and photographer. This is his first novel. His work has appeared in numerous outlets, including Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay, Dazed and Confused, Fault, Dust, and American Suburb X.
“A completely original and clearheaded voice.”—Ira Glass, host of This American Life
"We finish And Every Day Was Overcast in a delirious state of disassociation, not unlike the kids whose lives it seeks to evoke. This, of course, is why we turn to books—or one reason, anyway—to see the world as we have not before. The shabby suburbs of And Every Day Was Overcast may not be unknown to us, but Kwiatkowski’s ruthless excavation give us a new language by which we hear stories that might otherwise go unheard."— The Los Angeles Times , David Ulin
Photo-Eye Best Books of 2013 (Selected by Doug Rickard)
“A tale of trailer parks, drugs and teenage construction and destruction, Paul K has brought forth an American diary hugely personal and partially universal. Through skillfully written prose and raw imagery that's authored, found and stolen, we witness the protagonist's young life on display. It's not pretty nor should it be. A scrapbook of intention and carefully put together pieces, we witness elation and pain and the special concoction of America's ‘Florida’ in all its glory.”
“Kwiatkowski’s novel succeeds in doing much more than simply conveying the isolated experiences of one idle teenager with a penchant for drugs, pornography and reckless sexual encounters. Through a marriage of images and words, the novel illustrates the result of adolescent malaise against Florida’s eerie, subtropical backdrop."— Fault Magazine
"With aesthetic conviction comparable to that of Harmony Korine, this alternative novel is sure to have you nostalgic and reaching for the cheapest brand of beer you ever got your teenage hands on."— Nylon
“I can count on my fingers the number of great books that seamlessly mix photographs and literary text in a compelling way. Paul Kwiatkowski’s And Every Day is Overcast not only achieves this rare feat, he does so with an artistry that makes the achievement nearly invisible. . . A landmark in visual storytelling.”—Alec Soth
Out of South Florida's lush and decaying suburban landscape bloom the delinquent magic and chaotic adolescence of And Every Day Was Overcast. Paul Kwiatkowski's arresting photographs amplify a novel of profound vision and vulnerability. Drugs, teenage cruelty, wonder, and the screen-flickering worlds of Predator and Married…With Children shape and warp the narrator's developing sense of self as he navigates adventures and misadventures, from an ill-fated LSD trip on an island of castaway rabbits to the devastating specter of HIV and AIDS. This alchemy of photography and fiction gracefully illuminates the travesties and triumphs of the narrator’s quest to forge emotional connections and fulfill his brutal longings for love.
Paul Kwiatkowski is a New York-based writer and photographer. This is his first novel. His work has appeared in numerous outlets, including Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay, Dazed and Confused, Fault, Dust, and American Suburb X.
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 6, 2013
And Every Day was Overcast is like an impressionist painting of your childhood. It’s not how things were –- not unless you personally starved an entire island full of rabbits to death while dropping acid before you were old enough to drive -- but it stunningly captures how it seemed at the time that things must have been. Paul Kwiatkowski’s brief, episodic narration and wonderfully evocative photographs make the fear, lust, cruelty and excitement that came with growing up in prewar suburban America come flooding back.
This is a difficult book to describe. One of the liner notes describes it as a “coming of age” novel: a nominally accurate term of art that nevertheless instantly brings to mind a host of terrible and forgettable Young Adult novels, prescribed as summer reading and dealing with Very Serious Topics for Teens in the stilted style of a high school English teacher who badly wants to be “the cool one.” This is most emphatically not one of those. I would compare it most closely to the novel Veins, by Drew Fairweather, although Kwiatkowski is obviously dealing with somewhat heavier subject matter in a less comic tone. It is also impossible not to compare this book to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This comparison holds not just in the narrow sense that it tells of a heavy drug user’s bleak adventures in deepest America, but in its overall narrative style. Like Thompson, Kwiatkowski uses his overwhelmed and unreliable narrator to paint a hard-hitting caricature of a culture that went from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization, and made even that transition by only a bare margin. That he is sweating it out in South Florida strip malls instead of basement blackjack tables at 4AM is a minor distinction.
This is probably the best novel that I have read that was written in the 21st Century by someone other than Cormac McCarthy.
This is a difficult book to describe. One of the liner notes describes it as a “coming of age” novel: a nominally accurate term of art that nevertheless instantly brings to mind a host of terrible and forgettable Young Adult novels, prescribed as summer reading and dealing with Very Serious Topics for Teens in the stilted style of a high school English teacher who badly wants to be “the cool one.” This is most emphatically not one of those. I would compare it most closely to the novel Veins, by Drew Fairweather, although Kwiatkowski is obviously dealing with somewhat heavier subject matter in a less comic tone. It is also impossible not to compare this book to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This comparison holds not just in the narrow sense that it tells of a heavy drug user’s bleak adventures in deepest America, but in its overall narrative style. Like Thompson, Kwiatkowski uses his overwhelmed and unreliable narrator to paint a hard-hitting caricature of a culture that went from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization, and made even that transition by only a bare margin. That he is sweating it out in South Florida strip malls instead of basement blackjack tables at 4AM is a minor distinction.
This is probably the best novel that I have read that was written in the 21st Century by someone other than Cormac McCarthy.
March 28, 2021
Paul Kwiatkowski's illustrated novel is an innovative book that's difficult to categorize. It can almost be seen as a book of photography, containing roughly 50 pages of large print text, and about 230 of photos that range from sublime to nostalgic to bizarre and vaguely disturbing. The narrative, loosely mirroring the photos, also ranges from adolescent to transcendent. The narrator, identified in one passage as PK, (the reader can reasonably assume he's some version of Kwiatkowski's adolescent self, although it's hard to guage how true to life his experiences are) trips his way through high school in the mid-late 90s in south Florida, occasionally falling into sexual experiences with girls his age and older women, and generally acting more as observer than active participant. Kwiatkowski's writing is most transcendent when he philosophizes on growing up in south Florida from an adult vantage point. "Growing up in Florida was like developing in an afterlife, a different kind of paradise. A place where clouds lingered, passing slowly like giant Mickey Mouse gloves sweeping over my eyelids, hands masquerading as shade, casting a spell...I thought of how much effort it took to recall a single memory of picked-clean blue skies, and despite the years of constant sunshine, whenever I thought back to a specific memory, it seemed as though every day was overcast." Other passages descend into adolescent descriptions of sex and drugs, and wow, do kids in this time and place do a lot of drugs. More than the kids in the shore town where I grew up, who were known for adventurous substance use at early ages. And non-standard drugs. Horse tranquilizer, various homemade hallucinogenic concoctions and huffed freon from AC units.
The narrative is probably best viewed as a collection of snapshots because trying to collate it into the sum of its parts is frustrating. There's an odd loner kid nicknamed Cobain who in 1994 receives a beating so severe that the narrator (who doesn't participate in the beating but steals the kid's two-way "retard radio" as he lays unconscious) never learns for sure if he survived. The possibly dead Cobain and the phantom static voices from his retard radio echo throughout the book until, in the final pages, the narrator tosses it into the ocean "where neither age nor time could erode Cobain's voice." The final transmission (the narrative is divided by brief text "transmissions") he hears is "a fragmented news report about high school kids being mowed down with semiautomatic guns. There was no known motive. The killers were also students." It's 4/20/99. All of this seems like it sure as hell is symbolic of something, but I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly what Kwiatkowski wants to communicate. Is it about the fairly idealistic alternative youth culture of the early 90s devolving into Columbine and Woodstock 99? Is it about PK trying to find his way into some version of manhood he can live with in the "alive, slow, brutal, seething, and batshit crazy" culture of working/middle class south Florida? As a former student of literature it's very hard for me to not try to answer these questions and instead accept the snapshots and transmissions at face value: fragmented memories from the id of an adolescent boy who once tripped on acid every day for a year, filtered through the interpretations of a now mature young man.
The narrative is probably best viewed as a collection of snapshots because trying to collate it into the sum of its parts is frustrating. There's an odd loner kid nicknamed Cobain who in 1994 receives a beating so severe that the narrator (who doesn't participate in the beating but steals the kid's two-way "retard radio" as he lays unconscious) never learns for sure if he survived. The possibly dead Cobain and the phantom static voices from his retard radio echo throughout the book until, in the final pages, the narrator tosses it into the ocean "where neither age nor time could erode Cobain's voice." The final transmission (the narrative is divided by brief text "transmissions") he hears is "a fragmented news report about high school kids being mowed down with semiautomatic guns. There was no known motive. The killers were also students." It's 4/20/99. All of this seems like it sure as hell is symbolic of something, but I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly what Kwiatkowski wants to communicate. Is it about the fairly idealistic alternative youth culture of the early 90s devolving into Columbine and Woodstock 99? Is it about PK trying to find his way into some version of manhood he can live with in the "alive, slow, brutal, seething, and batshit crazy" culture of working/middle class south Florida? As a former student of literature it's very hard for me to not try to answer these questions and instead accept the snapshots and transmissions at face value: fragmented memories from the id of an adolescent boy who once tripped on acid every day for a year, filtered through the interpretations of a now mature young man.
January 28, 2014
Thanks to GoodReads First Reads and Black Balloon Publishing for a free copy of this book in exchange of my honest review.
And Every Day Was Overcast is a self-indulgent teenage acid trip. It is an "illustrated novel" about a kid growing up to be a teenager in Southern Florida among the slowly deteriorating suburban non-bliss. There is surprisingly little about the main character's family, save for a bit in the beginning. Most of the book chronicles the discombobulated adventures of Paul, the perpetually horny misfit, whose lack of articulation in anxious situations earns him the title of asshole by one female "friend," doubtless something the reader can also agree with throughout the book. Most of Paul's energy is spent on drugs, alcohol, and trying to get laid. Certainly far from my own life when I was young, there is a lot in Paul's drifting life that any reader can relate to: anxiety, curiosity about anything to do with sex, rebellion, and always trying to look cool, knowing you don't. Perhaps the most alien of Paul's experiences is his constant involvement with drugs, which, I suppose, is not uncommon in suburbia.
The look and feel of the photographs that may or may not be related to the stories in the book really give the feeling of Gummo (film by Harmony Korine): bleak wasteland, bored people, lots of nudity, women as objects, men as pigs, drugs, alcohol, more boredom, more wasteland. There is an overwhelming number of photos of two things: dead animals and nudes (of mostly women). Perhaps the photographs are trying to say something...
Kwaitkowski is a good writer, creating a memoir-like voice (whether it is a memoir or not is beside the point) that is convincing and surprisingly poetic at times. Descriptions of Florida and stretched out hours of boredom are remarkable at times, as well.
Recommended for fans of the films Kids and Gummo, swim teams, and bad haircuts.
And Every Day Was Overcast is a self-indulgent teenage acid trip. It is an "illustrated novel" about a kid growing up to be a teenager in Southern Florida among the slowly deteriorating suburban non-bliss. There is surprisingly little about the main character's family, save for a bit in the beginning. Most of the book chronicles the discombobulated adventures of Paul, the perpetually horny misfit, whose lack of articulation in anxious situations earns him the title of asshole by one female "friend," doubtless something the reader can also agree with throughout the book. Most of Paul's energy is spent on drugs, alcohol, and trying to get laid. Certainly far from my own life when I was young, there is a lot in Paul's drifting life that any reader can relate to: anxiety, curiosity about anything to do with sex, rebellion, and always trying to look cool, knowing you don't. Perhaps the most alien of Paul's experiences is his constant involvement with drugs, which, I suppose, is not uncommon in suburbia.
The look and feel of the photographs that may or may not be related to the stories in the book really give the feeling of Gummo (film by Harmony Korine): bleak wasteland, bored people, lots of nudity, women as objects, men as pigs, drugs, alcohol, more boredom, more wasteland. There is an overwhelming number of photos of two things: dead animals and nudes (of mostly women). Perhaps the photographs are trying to say something...
Kwaitkowski is a good writer, creating a memoir-like voice (whether it is a memoir or not is beside the point) that is convincing and surprisingly poetic at times. Descriptions of Florida and stretched out hours of boredom are remarkable at times, as well.
Recommended for fans of the films Kids and Gummo, swim teams, and bad haircuts.
September 22, 2014
As someone who grew up in South Florida, Kwiatkowski's book was spot on. It perfectly captures the boredom and dirtiness of youth. It's honest and genuine, with captivating snip-its into the lives of people you grew up with. It has been a while since I have seen an illustrated novel so perfectly executed. His photography is uncomfortable, honest and intriguing- the perfect companion to his tales. It is an easy read that will make you laugh and think.
August 19, 2013
Some thoughts here: http://blogs.slj.com/adult4teen/2013/...
April 21, 2014
This book is morbidly, grotesquely beautiful.
March 30, 2017
At the end I do not cry, because I'm not really doing that anymore.
When I close the book I huddle into the dog, we lay stretched out belly up. I'm the big spoon and she lifts her head back to reach mine.
I remember that she will die.
I tell myself I could drive out to the swamp. Its early, before work, I could smoke and drive to the swamp and listen to Drake.
Instead I order sedatives using a touch tone phone. Press one, go numb.
There’s no award for that.
I sweat and whisper to the dog "Please please don't let me be the one who finds you dead."
So we walk the neighborhood, swimming through humidity. We cross through hobo camps and the cardboard condos where hundred year old elm trees used to be.
I find four leaf clovers without trying. My brain just says, there it was, go get it, no matter how fast we’re gliding through.
There’s fresh mulch around the new apartments and it stings my nose. It stings like "And Every Day Was Overcast", remembering no sunny days.
The mulch covers the swamp they built the city on, but rivulets of water are still running through.
I find a four leaf clover. I find pages 13 and fourteen of "Nop's Trials". I find out what pages I've been missing, next to an empty orange Faygo bottle.
I do not cry. I have forgotten to write. I will not find the dog supine and eyes open. I found her alive and I take care of her and there’s no award for that.
I can listen to "Trophies" and it’ll put me into the clover until Drake says "Bitch I use a walkie-talkie," because that's just terrible.
When I close the book I huddle into the dog, we lay stretched out belly up. I'm the big spoon and she lifts her head back to reach mine.
I remember that she will die.
I tell myself I could drive out to the swamp. Its early, before work, I could smoke and drive to the swamp and listen to Drake.
Instead I order sedatives using a touch tone phone. Press one, go numb.
There’s no award for that.
I sweat and whisper to the dog "Please please don't let me be the one who finds you dead."
So we walk the neighborhood, swimming through humidity. We cross through hobo camps and the cardboard condos where hundred year old elm trees used to be.
I find four leaf clovers without trying. My brain just says, there it was, go get it, no matter how fast we’re gliding through.
There’s fresh mulch around the new apartments and it stings my nose. It stings like "And Every Day Was Overcast", remembering no sunny days.
The mulch covers the swamp they built the city on, but rivulets of water are still running through.
I find a four leaf clover. I find pages 13 and fourteen of "Nop's Trials". I find out what pages I've been missing, next to an empty orange Faygo bottle.
I do not cry. I have forgotten to write. I will not find the dog supine and eyes open. I found her alive and I take care of her and there’s no award for that.
I can listen to "Trophies" and it’ll put me into the clover until Drake says "Bitch I use a walkie-talkie," because that's just terrible.
January 9, 2014
I can't remember where I got this recommendation, but I hated this book. Blah blah, you were a horny teenager who did drugs. There was nothing new or revolutionary here, just the same old "memoir" that has been done time and time again.
April 19, 2014
The southern Florida swamp oozes out of very word and image in this book.
February 24, 2021
A deeply affecting book about the teenage experience in America at the dawn of the internet -- spot-on in every specific, thereby attaining the universal in the only authentic way there is.
October 26, 2018
Ho-ly shit. There is no aesthetic more primed to fire than this book's late-90s Southern Florida arson-baked school-skipping dirty-handie aesthetic. That doesn't mean we haven't see this aesthetic before, or that this book tells any sort of revolutionary, or even noteworthy, story about an asshole teenager fucking his life over in the American South, but it DOES mean that MAAAAN does this book have a FOOKIN aesthetic. The photographs were PERFECT, the text breaks were jarring and cutting, even the freaking color scheme reminiscent of the food court furniture at the Crystal River Mall in Citrus County. This book is a crustpunk tumblr jammed into a John Brandon book and a sadsack prequel to The Florida Project. This blew me away by how refined, perfectly retro, and stubborn this book was in its project. It also felt mean, dumb, and easy in many regards, but man if it isn't one of the best visual experiences I've had in a long time.
Note: this book felt like it was increasing the rotation of its narrative until violence broke out in some fashion. The fever-dream would not go on forever. And the book ended on 4/20/99, a date I did not understand until I searched it online. I was 1 when that day of horror passed. I grew up in a totally different generation. But I feel like with work like this I can see it that previous American teenage psyche, before another awful rifting event.
Note: this book felt like it was increasing the rotation of its narrative until violence broke out in some fashion. The fever-dream would not go on forever. And the book ended on 4/20/99, a date I did not understand until I searched it online. I was 1 when that day of horror passed. I grew up in a totally different generation. But I feel like with work like this I can see it that previous American teenage psyche, before another awful rifting event.
May 17, 2014
There were things that I both liked and disliked about this book. I absolutely loved that it incorporated multimedia into the story. I think the images really helped the story a lot, because I don't think I would have liked it as much without the photos. What I didn't like, though, was that it didn't have any captions to the photos. I wanted to know exactly what was going on in that photo instead of it being hinted at in the story. My college YA class read this book and one thing that I had to remind my classmates was that there is no proof that these photos are real. I think that is very cool, though, that photos and story have so much power to make people think the images are really the people in the story. I also wouldn't classify this as a YA book. I would classify it in Adult fiction, even though the MC is a young adult. I think it is just a tad too mature for the majority of young adults.
February 5, 2014
I received this through First Reads.
Kwiatkowski captures the time of 90's mostly outcast life in Florida. The words and stories are simple, but paint an exact picture of a teen's outcast type of life: drugs, girls, black metal, early computer porn... The photographs were beautiful as well. I only wish there were more stories. I wanted to get into his head just a bit more. Still props to the combination of words and photography. I did feel like I time traveled to 1994 Florida.
Kwiatkowski captures the time of 90's mostly outcast life in Florida. The words and stories are simple, but paint an exact picture of a teen's outcast type of life: drugs, girls, black metal, early computer porn... The photographs were beautiful as well. I only wish there were more stories. I wanted to get into his head just a bit more. Still props to the combination of words and photography. I did feel like I time traveled to 1994 Florida.
November 12, 2013
A wonderful mix of photos and narrative brings together the story of a teenager's life in South Florida. While the content may be somewhat disturbing for some, it rings true as a glimpse into what it was like to grow up around Miami in the 80s. The photos bring the narrative to life and the narrative brings life to the photos.
A very good quick read.
A very good quick read.
May 17, 2014
The prose and the candid disposable camera photos drew me into his 90s teenage world, and brought back a few bittersweet memories of my own while shocking me and breaking my heart at the same time. It evoked many of the same sensory memories as my own coming of age in South Louisiana, only darker and more bizarre.
November 9, 2013
Bleak, gross, and pretty boring. I didn't quite see the point.
September 7, 2016
Not my kind of book.
February 2, 2014
Really the only thing I can say about this is that is was interesting.
For my 50 States Challenge this is my Florida entry.
For my 50 States Challenge this is my Florida entry.
February 10, 2017
I loved this book. Photography and fiction blend seamlessly to tell a story alive with sex, drugs and death metal.
Read
June 14, 2023The ugly magic of sticky sweltering Florida childhood! This writer has a gift for stunning prose and visceral descriptions (some of the best and most memorable I’ve read) just to waste it on spending half the book recounting in explicit detail how sexually attracted he was to the little girls he remembers from his youth. It was really hard to enjoy the good parts when every other page ruined the experience with some despicable dehumanization of whatever girl the narrator encountered. A car crash I couldn’t look away from + idc call me a snowflake but this is the perfect example of why a lot of female readers avoid mens writing lmao
If anything this is a nice little cautionary tale on how porn rots the brains of men from a young age
If anything this is a nice little cautionary tale on how porn rots the brains of men from a young age
March 14, 2023
I’ve loved this book for a long time, and this is a re-read for me, though the last time I read it I was much younger, and felt differently about it.
This book is raw and honest, it is a ton to digest, look at, think about. This time reading it I took away a lot about the narrators sexuality and how it was formed and reformed by AIDS and the deaths it was causing as he was growing up. He is an outcast, obsessed with getting laid, and dumbing everything down with drugs. Who would he have been if he was less scared?
This book is raw and honest, it is a ton to digest, look at, think about. This time reading it I took away a lot about the narrators sexuality and how it was formed and reformed by AIDS and the deaths it was causing as he was growing up. He is an outcast, obsessed with getting laid, and dumbing everything down with drugs. Who would he have been if he was less scared?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 31, 2022
Mesmerizing experience on this illustrated novel. The illustrations are photographs, that when examined closely and followed along with the text, give a really interesting extra-dimension in all of this. It’s the feeling of your brain processing the image and the initial emotional reaction felt that adds uniquely to this work.
December 28, 2017
A novel told in transmissions and photos from the author, this is definitely an interesting book. The text and photos interact without making the most sense. Strongly feels like what a teenager in the 90s in South Florida should feel like.
September 9, 2023
I have no idea if I loved this or hated this or both (probably both). It’s weird and dark and compelling, it made me uncomfortable in fifteen different ways, and I read it in a single afternoon. Beware South Florida and teenage boys.
October 3, 2022
Reading this photo novel felt like watching a really cool movie (reminded me of something like My Winnipeg). Eerie Florida vibes, disaffected teens - amazing atmosphere!
March 26, 2024
only sought this out due to recommendations 'if you like harmony korine'. apt suggestion. quite unrelenting. very appreciative of it.
September 3, 2016
I am generally a fan of alternative or experimental forms of storytelling, particularly those that combine snippets of word and image in such a way that each serves as the crumbs or clues with which the reader constructs the plotline and particulars of the events being relayed. In that regard, I found Kwiatkowski's And Every Day Was Overcast intriguing. Along with the words "illustrated novel" on the cover, this was precisely what enticed me to pick up this book in the first place.
Shortly after diving in, my reaction quickly became Wow! I am SO not the demographic for this book. After finishing it and giving it a little time to process, however, I'd have to say that if I understood it at all then it expressly doesn't have a "target audience." Its intent was, I suppose, to convey in a highly innovative fashion the South Florida landscape of heat, boredom, and listlessness in which the author was mired for the period spanning his late elementary school through high school years. In other words, it's not about me (i.e., the reader). It's about him, the author, and many of the folks contained in its pages.
I read it, I finished it, I thought about it. What I concluded, however, was that in no way did this book speak to my own experience. Moreover, it didn't really get me to want to do anything, think anything, or feel anything in particular. I neither especially enjoyed the book nor disliked it while I was reading it. And I think that, too, may perhaps have been the point. For folks who lived in this place, this book may well have read like a school Yearbook. For the rest of us outsiders looking in, it was just like reading the dedications in someone else's yearbook--references to events we did not experience, parties to which we were not invited, and recounting details of people we did not know. Of course, Kwiatkowski appears to have been just as much an observer of his own life during those years as an agent or active participant. He went along for the ride. And this book documents bits and pieces of that ride. In producing this book, however, I suspect that (i.e., his disconnect or lassitude) may have changed.
The one thing I most enjoyed in working my way through the book, was trying to sort out which of the guys in the photos was/might have been the author. We get his voice in the text, we know he took many of the photos, but we are confident for some reason that he's present in some of them. I really liked the fact that the photos weren't captioned, and that the reader is tasked with connecting the dots between narrative and image. That said, while this really wasn't my thing I definitely hope that the author keeps working at his craft. I can imagine seeing his work in a gallery someday and having little tags of text juxtaposed with larger than life images on the walls. At some point he may tell a tale with which I connect. But even if he never does, he is conveying some visceral emotions and gritty events--unattractive as many of them are--in a creative and authentic fashion. I can only hope that as many of his co-conspirators made it out of the place he so clearly was waiting to exit.
Shortly after diving in, my reaction quickly became Wow! I am SO not the demographic for this book. After finishing it and giving it a little time to process, however, I'd have to say that if I understood it at all then it expressly doesn't have a "target audience." Its intent was, I suppose, to convey in a highly innovative fashion the South Florida landscape of heat, boredom, and listlessness in which the author was mired for the period spanning his late elementary school through high school years. In other words, it's not about me (i.e., the reader). It's about him, the author, and many of the folks contained in its pages.
I read it, I finished it, I thought about it. What I concluded, however, was that in no way did this book speak to my own experience. Moreover, it didn't really get me to want to do anything, think anything, or feel anything in particular. I neither especially enjoyed the book nor disliked it while I was reading it. And I think that, too, may perhaps have been the point. For folks who lived in this place, this book may well have read like a school Yearbook. For the rest of us outsiders looking in, it was just like reading the dedications in someone else's yearbook--references to events we did not experience, parties to which we were not invited, and recounting details of people we did not know. Of course, Kwiatkowski appears to have been just as much an observer of his own life during those years as an agent or active participant. He went along for the ride. And this book documents bits and pieces of that ride. In producing this book, however, I suspect that (i.e., his disconnect or lassitude) may have changed.
The one thing I most enjoyed in working my way through the book, was trying to sort out which of the guys in the photos was/might have been the author. We get his voice in the text, we know he took many of the photos, but we are confident for some reason that he's present in some of them. I really liked the fact that the photos weren't captioned, and that the reader is tasked with connecting the dots between narrative and image. That said, while this really wasn't my thing I definitely hope that the author keeps working at his craft. I can imagine seeing his work in a gallery someday and having little tags of text juxtaposed with larger than life images on the walls. At some point he may tell a tale with which I connect. But even if he never does, he is conveying some visceral emotions and gritty events--unattractive as many of them are--in a creative and authentic fashion. I can only hope that as many of his co-conspirators made it out of the place he so clearly was waiting to exit.
February 7, 2014
This book didn't live up to it's hype I'd read about....at least it didn't for me. Perhaps I'm not artsy enough to "get" it. I didn't think the pictures added ANYTHING to this book. They seemed random and without meaning. Then again, the author's recount of his teenage years also seemed random and without meaning. The drug induced haze he lived in seemed to have a lot to do with this. Honestly, I only stuck with this book to the end because it was very short: only 73 pages. Had it been 200+, I probably would have put it down after 25-35 pages. The memories are so fueled with drugs....and they are largely unclear because of the drug use. After a while I just thought "I get it, you grew up in a really crappy area, surrounded by really crappy people, and you did lots of drugs and drank lots of alcohol." I just didn't see any wisdom imparted by the author or lessons learned. It just seemed like a diary of a bad trip for several years. It always amazes me when people publish works which outline their past illicit behavior in great detail. If the book includes how the author overcame their addictions, bad behavior, poor choices, etc, and how they move on, forgive themselves, forgive others, etc...then I get it. It's worth the read...we all have things we've done we're not proud of. However, this really just read more like a diary of assorted drug trips by a person who, at least in the years depicted in this book, didn't learn anything of moral stature from his experiences. Or, if he did learn from them, he imparted none of that wisdom or reflections in this book.
March 16, 2014
Sometimes you want to like a book more than you do. I think the concept of this is great. You don't see photography blended with fiction very often, and in that sense it's innovative. However, I couldn't help but feel like it fell short of what that concept could accomplish.
Maybe stories of dysfunctional, drug-addicted youths aren't my wheel-house, but it genuinely seemed to not really go anywhere but to rather stew around in it's own bleak, tripped out sadness. It's evocative of a particular time and place, but doesn't really stretch to say anything profound about it.
The photographs add to that sense of place a great deal, but I found the artistry of them a bit all over the place. The end result is a bit like reading the diary of a sad kid while also flipping through his associated facebook photographs.
Maybe stories of dysfunctional, drug-addicted youths aren't my wheel-house, but it genuinely seemed to not really go anywhere but to rather stew around in it's own bleak, tripped out sadness. It's evocative of a particular time and place, but doesn't really stretch to say anything profound about it.
The photographs add to that sense of place a great deal, but I found the artistry of them a bit all over the place. The end result is a bit like reading the diary of a sad kid while also flipping through his associated facebook photographs.
December 7, 2014
My opinion of this book vacillates between love and hate. I grew up during the 90s, and the author paints such an honest portrayal of the kids on the fringe at that time. That being said I think the author used unnecessarily graphic language and photos without reason. It's as if he attempted shock when this little story didn't need it. It felt weird and out of place.
I'm still sorting out my feelings about this one...
I'm still sorting out my feelings about this one...
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