Those Days Are Over
by Steve Anwyll
Drivers treat rue Saint-Jacques like a race track. Waiting at the corner S hoists a bag meant for camping on his shoulders. The weight is meant for a younger man. All his dirty clothes. Blankets too. Ash asked him when the last time he washed them and he didn’t have a good answer.
STEVE ANWYLL is the author of Welfare (Tyrant, 2019). Follow him: @oneloveasshole.
Steve Anwyll’s debut novel Welfare—dropped on Christmas Day by Tyrant Books—is a book that—much like its teenage narrator—takes an antagonistic stance against a lot of things. It is anti-purple prose. It is also an anti-coming-of-age novel, following a young character in that awkward adjustment stage between boy and man as he runs away from home to… find himself, maybe learn a couple life lessons? No. To live on welfare and avoid work and get high as much as possible. I said he was a seventeen-year-old boy, where else would this be going?
In our weekend reading: reviews of books by Raymond Queneau and Ling Ma, an interview with Dev Hynes, and more.