I Read Books: Kill Rudy Johnson

 

Kill Rudy Johnson

I've been dipping in and out of a pdf Rudy Johnson sent me of his poetry collection Kill Rudy Johnson. When I say dipping in and out, at the end of each poem we're offered choices based on the poem in a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-is-a-trademark-of-Chooseco-All-Rights-Reserved" style.

The poems are mostly video gamed themed (sometimes tabletop role-playing game themed) often reflecting (in more-or-less heightened ways) parts of Rudy's life during the period he was playing the game. I think this continues in the linked online multimedia stuff that there are QR codes for in the book. I've not actually checked as I'm already reading on a screen it seems silly to use another.

The poems themselves tend to the stream of consciousness free verse, though many have strong structural elements. Rudy uses shorthand, telegraphic phrases, in the way that gamers on voice chat talk. The poems are often funny, often dark, winding together the content of the game with the choice of words and structure. There’s some characteristic wit, irony shining through sincerity, and quite a lot of bad taste imagery and words*.

Summing up, I note that the use of the gamebook format is more than just a gimmick. It reflects Rudy’s gaming obsession in the structure of the book, as well as offering thematic links between the pieces. Putting on my interactive arts hat for a moment, this makes for a collection with multiple ways to see the poems, different strands of material linked in varying ways.

One disadvantage to reading the pdf is I don't have a good feeling for how much I've read, and how much I've missed. How much more so if this were a html hypertext labyrinth. My conclusions are that this is a collection expressly designed to be read as a paper book, and in addition Do Not Kill Rudy Johnson.

Might have to change my mind though.

Read This: Kill Rudy Johnson
Don’t Read This: Kill Rudy Johnson

 

* As might be expected for autofictional gaming poems of boys and men in the 90s and early 2000s, there’s slurs and swearing, deployed for various reasons. At the online launch Rudy, a mentally ill black man, offered us a creative commons license to use the n-word, which as is obvious I’m not using**. He does use it in this collection.

** Why not? If, say, someone calls me a faggot I can and usually do choose not to be offended, taking it as a vulgar acknowledgement of my ambiguous sexual identity. Still, I kind of hope for better from myself.