Tumor Fruit by Carlton Mellick III
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
How do I feel…
Tricked. Sort of.
While not as bizarre as Mellick’s other books, I gotta say this one had parts that were emotionally resonant. Which I guess shows my own bias, that I’m having trouble saying that I felt emotions while reading a book by the author of The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, but so be it.
So while I feel like it didn’t deliver hardcore on the bizarre elements, it’s a pretty good read.
My question about his books right now is, what’s with having a bikini babe on all the covers? Why is that a thing? Because there are some of the books that have older covers with no babe, and then newer editions that have the bikini babe covers.
For example, let’s look at the Menstruating Mall:
Original cover, weird as hell, but there you have it.
And then the new cover:
I guess…maybe it says more about me as a person that I’m less comfortable carrying this second version around. Or maybe that’s part of the deal with reading bizarro. It’s not supposed to be comfortable. It’s just that I feel like people are going to get the wrong idea. It’s not that I’m reading grotesque pornography. Not ALL THE TIME, anyway, not at a Starbucks on a Wednesday. Tumor Fruit had some naughty bits, although maybe not as much as the cover would suggest.
And I suppose the book IS called The Menstruating Mall. I mean, who’s going to see that and think, “Eh, who wrote that? Franzen? Was it Jonathan Franzen?”
And it’s not a slam on the cover art either. I think it works just fine.
But there’s something about it…I bought The Baby Jesus Butt Plug at a Barnes and Noble. I can’t say the clerk looked too pleased. But somehow that was easier than it would have been had the cover been adorned with a sexy lady.
When you get right down to it, I guess I’m just a prude. I like my malls to menstruate with a minimum of sexiness and my baby jesus to plug butts with as little nudity as possible. I’m old fashioned that way.