badbadbad

badbadbad a (transmedia) novel by jesús ángel garcía

NOVEL : SOUNDTRACK : FILM

"Recommended for collections of contemporary fiction, literary fiction, small press fiction, emerging authors, neo-pulp fiction, fiction about the internet age, and Southern fiction." -- book review by Karen Lillis (Small Press Librarian)

trade paperback
(on New Pulp Press)
available from

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ebook in all formats
now available from

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Special deals on books, CDs, DVDs & custom multimedia combos are only available here
or at live events.

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RECENT & UPCOMING LIVE APPEARANCES

August 27, Saturday, Oaktown Indie Mayhem, Warehouse 416 : 8pm screening of badbadbad "Fear" film followed by live literary performance & many other filmmakers, visual artists & musicians (DETAILS).

September 10, Saturday, 7pm - 9pm, East Bay on the Brain (The Layover, 1517 Franklin St, Oakland, CA) w/ Lizzy Acker, Andrea Kneeland, Joe Loya, Tomas Moniz, Jan Richman, James Warner, Paul Corman-Roberts & host Lauren Becker.

September 12, Monday, 7pm, The Monthly Rumpus, Make-out Room (3225 22nd St in the Mission, San Francisco, CA) w/ Michelle Tea, Susan Straight, David Rocklin, Hate Factory & host Stephen Elliott.

October 10, Monday, 5:30pm, OccupySF (101 Market St, San Francisco, CA) w/ Nato Green & Seth Fischer.

October 15, Saturday, 8:30pm - 9:30pm, Phase 3 of Litquake's Lit Crawl!!! (The Lone Palm, 3394 22nd St in the Mission, San Francisco, CA) w/ Colby Buzzell, Anne O. Fisher, Tonya Foster, Adam Mansbach (Go the F*** to Sleep!) & Aaron Ximm.

Feburary 18, 2012, Saturday, 7pm, Beyond Baroque (681 Venice Bl. Venice, CA). Details TBA.

February 29, 2012, Wednesday, 8pm, AWP 2012 Chicago Kick-off Party (The Empty Bottle,1035 N. Western Ave, Chicago, IL) w/ xTx, Sarah Rose Etter, Victor David Giron, Barry Graham, James Greer, Lindsay Hunter, Jamie Iredell, Michael Kimball, Lara Konesky, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Mary Miller, Craig Renfroe, Rebecca Roberts, Peter Schwartz, Amber Sparks, Sarah Sweeney, Ben Tanzer & Mike Young. Insane, I know.

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TOP CALENDAR PICKS
for badbadbad live performances
in the following publications:
Washington Post Express, Chicago Tribune, Boston Phoenix, SFWeekly, Flavorpill New York, Brooklyn Eagle, Tucson Weekly, Creative Loafing Atlanta, InvadeNOLA, Pittsburgh City Paper, Digging Pitt, Chicagoist, The Kansas City Star, Riverfront Times & The Rumpus.

badbadbad
SUMMER TOUR 2011 ARCHIVE
June 17 - August 14
31 shows in 21 cities
Riding with Jesus: Tour Blog
@ElectricLiterature

Please click here for a full-scale map with details
on each live appearance.

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go to

PAGE ONE
for badbadbad stories, songs, film clips & video of live performances

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ADVANCE BLURBAGE

“An exhilarating and frightening book, badbadbad is about the laying of hands—to heal, to arouse, to end—a weird, funny, fucked-up love letter of love and violence from a Son to a son. Jesús Ángel García’s protagonist was made in the likeness of God, and God is an animal.” - Lindsay Hunter, author of Daddy’s

“If Philip Roth and Flannery O'Connor had a disinherited love child who worked simultaneously for Jimmy Swaggart and The Advocate, he might grow up to write a novel like Jesús Ángel García’s badbadbad.” - Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil’s Territory

“Jesús Ángel García has given us a story that not only mimics but answers our manic, semi-virtual lives and the question of how to redeem ourselves: a rollicking, sexy, razor-witted romp with heart.” - Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart

“badbadbad is a blasphemous literary adventure. Jesús Ángel García is more than a powerful new voice of our generation; his cult is bent on taking over heaven and earth.” - Tony DuShane, author of Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk

“Jesús Ángel García successfully merges the pulpy feel of those old-fashioned gas station novels with something as dark and surreal as a David Lynch film. The reader is thrown into a hybrid world where language is a piercing bold-red and details are a reassuring clear-white. García curates American inbred identity with an eye for our media’s stranglehold on modern culture curiosities. Garcia has given rise to a neo-noir work to be reckoned with.” - Michael Seidlinger, author of The Day We Delay

“badbadbad is a strange, off-trail romp through a Deep South inhabited by Born Again preachers and twisted badbadbad girls. The ghosts of Elmer Gantry and Chester Himes haunt this hip-hop vision of the new South.” - Jonathan Woods, author of Bad Juju

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FIRST LOVE FROM FIRST READERS

“Wholly unique . . . often funny, and profane, and strange, even sexy. . . . badbadbad reads like a fever dream.” - Ryan Sloan, author of The Plagiarists

“I loved your book . . . paralleling sex and faith as desperate grasps at redemption.” - Moxie Mezcal, author of Concrete Underground

“The story shows an appreciation for the vulnerability of women.” - Lauren Becker, editor of Corium Magazine

“A Mulholland Drive mindfuck.” - Ashley McCall, writer at Sacramento Book Review

“Amazing music descriptions, sexy sex scenes, and at times laugh-out-loud hilarious.” - Joy Lusco, TV writer for The Wire

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GO TO PAGE ONE

BOOK REVIEW

"Garcia is a vigorous and hugely talented writer... [who] aims to unsettle your assumptions about class, about gender, about sex, about religion, about identity: in short, about yourself, and what it means to be human in an inhuman world." - James Greer (North of Onhava)

BOOK REVIEW

"Badbadbad comes across as the combined literary effort of Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and Robert Anton Wilson: subtle word play, bizarre humor, and unorthodox paradoxes, packaged in sizzling verbal pyrotechnics." (5 stars) - Randall Radic (Blog Critics/Seattle Post Intelligencer)

BOOK REVIEW

"Fascinating for its grasp of the intersection between literature and our modern modes of communication." - Evan Karp (San Francisco Chronicle)

BOOK REVIEW

"Jesus Angel Garcia blows religion up blimp-size and lights taboos like Molotov cocktails tossed on a manicured, Christian lawn in his biblical, technologically charged landscape.... bursting at the seams with fascinating women who are outrageous in their demands and crackling with desire." - Antonia Crane (The Rumpus)

THE BAT SEGUNDO RADIO SHOW!

"Subjects Discussed: Unreliable orgasmic narration, flings and sex parties, the furry culture, whether badbadbad is a misleading title, Hubert Selby, the reader’s judgment, the problems with nonjudgmental sex, the openness of metropolitan cities, Irvine Welsh’s Filth, de Sade, whether Mary Gaitskill’s fiction is erotic, presenting a protagonist with moral challenges... Jeanette Winterson, people who tweet your appearance at a party, anti-human technology as a form of pornography..." - Edward Champion (The Bat Segundo Show)

BOOK REVIEW

"The prose is as razor sharp as you’d expect in old hardboiled paperbacks, with the same juxtaposition of opposites creating the same tension we’ve come to love from the genre, and the cover is designed with the same campy grittiness in mind. badbadbad, however, isn’t a pulp novel, but a taut psychological examination, a blueprint into madness.... This is an important distinction to note because the novel is shot through with this sentiment, this idea of covertness, of hidden layers, of people masquerading as things they’re not." - Nik Korpon (Electric Literature's The Outlet)

BOOK REVIEW
"Finally, badbadbad degenerates into a blur of violence, obsession, addiction, paranoia, and deception, all told by a narrator who refuses to analyze his actions and motivations and past, or even to define himself, leaving the reader to pass judgment. It is in this process, when we are called to be judge and jury... that starts us wondering about what truly defines who we are and what we do." - Robert Kloss (Red Fez)

BOOK REVIEW

"A novel that puts getting the story across above all... a momentum-gaining rollercoaster of faith and desire which spirals into the most entertaining kind of destruction. As a dark, erotic and fun adventure, badbadbad succeeds in a way that I’ve not read in contemporary literature since Arthur Neresian’s Suicide Casanova." - Jon Reiss (Vol. 1 Brooklyn)

BOOK REVIEW
"Think of BADBADBAD as a well studied mix in between... AMERICAN PSYCHO and Heath Lowrance's THE BASTARD HAND. Quite eclectic, I know. But I told you this isn't like anything else.... BADBADBAD is a psychedelic, perverted arthouse novel that has the purest goals: to examine what we do with the darkest human emotions and the most painful longings." - Benoit Lelievre (Dead End Follies)

BOOK REVIEW

"The writing is top-notch, smart and carefully playful, transcending its pulp-fiction clothing. Any author who can write the line, “We embraced like lovers at the threshold of the void,” and have it sound like the perfect words at the perfect time, is doing something right." - Todd Hebert (Not About Religion)

BOOK REVIEW

"The pain that goes on in this story is so real, so alive... Jesús brings you along, not only as a witness, but as a companion out there in the dark with the flourishes and leanings of a beat poet. Despite badbadbad being García's debut novel, he handles the narrative with the hands of an experienced guide, making the turn toward the next page all the more reason to find out what happens next, what's around the next corner, where is that next wow moment." - Sean P. Ferguson (The Velvet/Ferghova)

BOOK REVIEW

"The novel is its own experiment in splicing together elements of religion, technology and 21st century personality crisis. The story of badbadbad is the age-old conflict between want and need, of the search for paradise and lunch, one man's sudden awakening to life's duality." - Mark Bromberg (Bellemeade Books: Writing About Reading)

BOOK REVIEW

"The novel sustains the straight-talk trashiness of 20th Century pulp, the sex-romp identity games of Kathy Acker, and the dark inevitability of Giovanni's Room. But it considers an absolutely current societal malaise: the twin-headed hydra of selective isolation and social media addiction. In the process, badbadbad reveals a new brand of lust for life and a new kind of lost generation." - Karen Lillis (Karen the Small Press Librarian)

BOOK REVIEW

"García wants to toy with the similarities, crafting a narrative wherein the desires of disparate communities are revealed to be not so different after all—wherein addiction, manipulation, and insincerity exist alongside transcendence, radical freedom, and utter authenticity, all of these manifest, at times, by hypocritical zealots, pious believers, abusive pervs, and vulnerably open creatures aware that whatever they are, this identity is constituted, foremost, by their physical needs and wants." - Spencer Dew (decomP)

BOOK REVIEW
"This book is a must-read mindfuck that will make you sick to your stomach, laugh out loud, and perhaps even cry." - Delovely Olive (Oysters & Chocolate)

BOOK REVIEW

"The novel has a lot to say about religion and sexuality, the Deep South and the internet age. It also deals very nicely with loneliness and identity... the bread and butter of a lot of classic noir. Dude’s prose, dialogue and characters are rock solid, his sex scenes refreshingly unembarrassing." - Nerd of Noir (Spinetingler)

BOOK REVIEW

"The language is fresh, jive, and modern, the scene simultaneously funny and horrifying; the pages turn on their own, and the reader has a good time on one wild ride." - Jason Lee Miller (Gloom Cupboard)

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TRANSMEDIA REVIEW

"A great example of what print publishing can be... I enjoyed the way these mini-films complimented badbadbad's storyline, pulling you out of the chaotic web JAG weaved for himself and proving that real people go through these same or similar things too." - Lori Hettler (The Next Best Book Club)

BOOK CLUB SPOTLIGHT:
THE BARNES & NOBLE MYSTERY BLOG

"He starts over as both a servant of God and a sexual messiah in a double life worthy of Ed Wood." - Jedidiah Ayres (Ransom Notes)

FILM REVIEW & SAN FRANCISCO
LAUNCH PARTY REVIEW

"It occurred to me that we all witnessed The Truth together and that this type of occasion can change the way we communicate with one another." - Evan Karp (Litseen) - video

SF LAUNCH PARTY REVIEW

"A kick-ass book launch party... the heart of badbadbad's debut was the film." - Benjamin Wachs (SFWeekly)

SF LAUNCH PARTY PREVIEW

"The operating question in badbadbad seems to be the great existential question of how, if at all, you might reconcile daily duties as a church webmaster with nightly duties as an online sexual messiah." - Jonathan Kiefer (SFWeekly)

BALTIMORE LAUNCH PARTY REVIEW

"Thanks to Jesus Angel Garcia for a hell of a night. Sandra and I left the building last night washed in the badbadbad blood of his pulp revival." - Brian Lindenmuth (Spinetingler) - video

NOIR AT THE BAR REVIEW

"Jesus Angel Garcia put the lights out with his megaphone preacher routine from badbadbad." - Jedidiah Ayres (Hardboiled Wonderland)

AWP 2011: LIVE NUDE WORDS! REVIEW

"Jesus Angel Garcia destroys the joint with You Have to Get Naked to be Clothed in the Lord, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reverend’s Wife, a selection from his upcoming novel badbadbad. His performance is what every reading should be." - Nik Korpon (Through the Rearview Drunkenly)

FICTION OF A FUTURE AGE

"A wildly different concept of what novelized fiction can be." - Paul M. Davis (Shareable)

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SIX QUESTION SEX INTERVIEW

"Music runs through the novel in a way that makes the book feel like a loud, thrilling, invigorating concert. A concert about sex, religion, music and violence." - Jessica Anya Blau (The Nervous Breakdown)

TNB SELF-INTERVIEW

"I think of badbadbad as a question rather than a statement, as if the story is provoking the reader to ask him- or herself what’s “bad,” or what does it mean to be “bad,” let alone 3xbad. The narrative is structured to challenge readers to clarify their own personal values (and capacity for non-judgment) through a series of increasingly thorny interactions between the protagonist and a range of characters in his social network." - (TNB)

WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE INTERVIEW

"I like the idea of three distinct art projects that can stand alone but also are interrelated. Most interesting to me is how what people said in the documentary made me rethink how I was interpreting some of the issues in the book. That was an unexpected upside." - Patrick Wensink (WWAATD)

MONKEYBICYCLE INTERVIEW

"People say write what you know and ‘jesusangelgarcia meets ticktockclock’ is full of brutal language and graphic sexual situations – does this piece have any basis in personal experience?" (Monkeybicycle)

VOUCHED AWFUL INTERVIEW

"Q: Why do you write?... A: Provocation. Subversion. R-I-O-T." (Vouched)

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