Ablutions

Ablutions is a collage of anecdotes and stories about a functioning alcoholic serving booze to career alcoholics in a sometimes sleazy, sometimes trendy LA bar. The book takes the form of the titular and remorseless alcoholic bartender and making notes on his fabled book about the people he serves.

Slowly, though, he becomes the book, and the line between the notes and the action blur. At first, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. When the pills and the drinks pile up, and his wife finally leaves him, he falls, in the same way those he observes do, into a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape.

Reminiscent of Charles Bukowski's more unflinching moments of depression and depravity, and filled with a nauseous black humour, the book is sparse in its prose but says so much about its characters by painting the faintest of sketches about these drunks and their lives, and as you start to colour in the sketches, you see the parallels with the locals at your own boozer. The book is masterfully minimalist and cold but bleak and funny at the same time.