About Me
My name is Dr. Joseph Suglia.
In all modesty, I am the greatest author in the world, and the world is slowly recognizing that fact.
My most recent book, Watch Out is the most significant novel of the past thirty years.
A cinematic version of Watch Out will be directed by the award-winning filmmaker Steve Balderson (Firecracker) in 2008 / 2009.
I was declared one of Chicago's most promising writers by The Chicago Reader, the largest independent newspaper in the Midwest.
I earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University.
What will become of me is anyone's guess.
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Plot Synopsis
Watch Out is the story of Jonathan Barrows, a man who falls in love with his own body. He takes pleasure in rejecting the advances of his many admirers.
Jonathan Barrows desires no one other than himself--and is therefore universally desired. He is endlessly surrounded and hounded by those who yearn for his flesh.
NOTE: WATCH OUT contains scenes that shock even the most jaded of readers. No one under the age of twenty-one should read this novel. You have been warned.
To read my novel: click here .
"[WATCH OUT is] totally fascinating... and perhaps a bit much in terms of cruelty."
---Brinke Stevens
"[WATCH OUT is] a thoroughly entertaining read, outlandish and hilarious, and I absolutely recommend it. Joseph Suglia, despite his off-color absurdity, is a brilliant writer and subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) masters morbidity and humor."
---Jessica P. Wallin, Enigma Magazine
"Joseph Suglia is a brilliant writer. The subtlety of his humor in the context of such outrageous content is as good if not better than the top-selling humor writers out there. I enjoyed the hell out of this book and laughed out loud at almost every page.
"The only negative was the last quarter of the book, where it felt like Suglia tossed his entire gross-out hand onto the table as some sort of climax. His writing and sense of humor is so great and otherwise subtle that this felt forced and contrary to the well-paced mastery of the rest of the book. But this does not negate that this is one hell of a read, and Suglia can really string the words together. I highly endorse this novel and look forward to Suglia's future projects."
---Adrienne Jones, the author of The Hoax
"Watch Out, Joseph Suglia's verbally brilliant [second] novel, starts conventionally enough - a young man taking a journey on a train to attend a job interview - yet the protaganist, Jonathan Barrows is anything but conventional. It is narrated for the most as an internal monologue which at times becomes a near-celebration of alienation. Barrows is 'disinclined towards human beings.' 'I loathe humanity. Look at those insects! Squirming vermin!' Other human beings, for not only is Barrows like no one else - 'the highest form that humanity has reached,' 'the most extraordinary being who has ever existed' and so on - but he is also in love with himself, literally and to the point were he masturbates using photographs of himself and f---s a blow-up doll made in his own image.
"Barrows, 'the hottest iguana in the reptile house,' finds the attention he warrants from other people repulsive - 'both women and men are attracted to Me in the way that flies are attracted to filet mignon,' he tells the reader. 'All of these fools. Noisome sheep. They are nothing more than props on My stage. Tools, I can use them how I please. I have never met a single human being who is on My level. The history of humanity is nothing more than a preparation for My emergence into the world.'
"And what an emergence. Suglia, a proponent (and inventor) of 'excessive fiction,' defined as that fiction which 'presses the limits of language and possibility,' has, in Jonathan Barrows and the subsequent work, crafted an exquisite character and a compelling novel reminiscent of Dennis Cooper and Raymond Queneau. His prose, rich and provocative, [feels as if it were] proof-read by Georges Bataille...
"Although Watch Out is by no means a comic novel - in fact, at times it is written almost in a deadpan style - the erotic nightmare, the tale of bodily transgression and excess raises a chuckle but is corrupt in a way that can only end in death. Intense, sharp, fatalistic and relentless, here is a novel that will force the reader to face up to the potential failure within themselves, yet at the same time Suglia - like a modern-day Huysmans - makes you want to shut yourself away and do very bad things."
---Susan Tomaselli, Dogmatika
To read my novel: click here .
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"Watch Out is meant to grate, to challenge your tolerance and notions of how to relate to a character. On one hand, you despise Jonathan Barrows for his oblivious conceitedness; on the other, you wonder if perhaps he truly is the hottest, smartest, most interesting stud in the universe. His obsession with his own 'luscious erection' is repulsive yet engrossing---you end up feeling like a creep for getting so involved in his gruesome hallucinations."
---Liz Armstrong, The Chicago Reader
"The writing is gorgeous: pretentious but charismatic in its own right."
---Kinsee Morlan, San Diego City Beat
"Hopefully, you’ll take my advice and FIND THIS BOOK! It is a page-turner, an eye-opening, fantastic trip. I simply couldn’t put it down, I just had to keep on reading; I had to see what would happen next... I laughed out loud so much – more so than anything I can think of, except Bukowski... If you are a fan of the late, great William S. Burroughs or the aforementioned Bukowski, you will be right at home in Joseph Suglia’s world: a world of hallucinatory reveries, strange synchronicities and the most graphic sadistic, masochistic and sadomasochistic lunacies this side of The Western Lands. But there is also the most hilarious, self-centered, self-loving (literally) portrayal of a character in the persona of Jonathan Barrows. I instantly connected with Barrows’s misanthropy, nihilism, caustic wit, his use of cool, original-sounding metaphors and most of all the intense solipsism. It is a wonderfully and bleakly humorous or humorously bleak tale of one man who is swallowed up by a world he never made: a cold, cruel, stupid orbit of [idiots] that is a microcosm of America. I won’t give the ending away, but if you are as nauseated by pop culture as Suglia seems to be and as I am, you’ll not be unhappy with it (‘X’ = Britney Spears, OK?). You’ll be thinking that there is justice possible in this world, even if it is only a fantasy!"
---Kent Manthie, Reviewer Magazine
Click on any of the images below to read my novel.
To read my novel: click here
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To read my novel: click here .
I have a Web site:
www.josephsuglia.com
