Looking for the Magic by Max G. Morton

The brilliant follow-up to Indestructible Wolves of the Apocalypse Junkyard
Book ships early next week.
Edition of 400.
190 pages.
Heartworm #32
Available in the store now.
www.theheartworm.com


Max Morton is a guru of the murderous American underbelly, and Looking For the Magic is a gem-encrusted sarcophagus of epic memoir, adventure, violence, magic, loss, and a journey to the four American corners. Morton's words have yet to fail the hungry global tribe of whom he speaks, and they never well.

An eleven-chapter arena of unwell living. Foreword by Boyd Rice, collages by Dominick Fernow. Magic's aura is still black, but it shows tomorrow's colors as the search grows. From the pre-teen kicks of the suburban karate circuit, straight down to the attempted murder of Tiny Tim, back up again at Coney Island High, to a realm of balance in a Park Avenue brothel. Let a teenage klansman, an autistic weatherman, a crackbaby Count, Peffy Moffitt and Polly Magoo of the mainlining set, a sheriff with invisible handcuffs, a Santa Monica painted nightcat and a girl named Kitten be your guide through the second block of the Apocalypse Junkyard.

"Anyone who wishes to write about drinking, fucking, running with
the bulls or going onto the battlefield, had better do those things before
putting the pen to paper. Max has obviously run on different battlefields
with different bulls, and used stronger forms of intoxicants. His writings
are like beloved thumbnail sketches of sordid memories. Or perhaps lurid
Polaroids of them. Reading them is a fun and strange and voyeuristic, all
at once."- Boyd Rice

Two selections from Looking for the Magic--------------

"My first test was for the yellow belt. When everyone had completed their tests, we had to stand motionless for an hour while sensei and the other black belts played Atari in his office deciding whether or not we had passed. It felt just like the warehouse in preschool, energies that possessed forgotten battlegrounds, from an era I thought I had long since forgotten. I was so nervous that I pissed my pants while standing in the required horse stance. Fear overtook me, as I was sure I would fail and prove my father’s words true, that I was a weak failure. Sitting on a bench across the room with the other parents, my mother saw the yellow stream that was running down my bare feet onto the floor, grabbed some paper towels, and erased the evidence of my terror. Sensei and the elder black belts exited the office and awarded belts to us all, even the kid in the damp gee. One year and two dry belts later, I surpassed the ridicule and kicked my way to become the state champion."

"The ghosts of east and west were still playing tug-o-war with my luggage, even after I touched down. It was my second attempt at making San Francisco my world and I knew it was a doomed mistake that I was destined to repeat from the moment I stepped
into my pink taxicab just outside the terminal. It was too soon for such a shade of taxi to be picking me up so I demanded that my new whale of a boss take me with him to Los Angeles to find “the magic” but first I had to plug into the corner of the nightwalkers to get my new city glow on. After that mission of overpaid grunts was complete, the alchemists turned all the un-precious metals that followed me from NYC into liquid. These things happen in Hollywood. After all it’s an Autistic playground for over functioning human thermometers. Upon returning from finding “the magic”, I had no idea that I was about to enter an old wardrobe that was held together by all the past parts that I had once died with. My head was full of future divorce and my thoughts were induced by cough syrup and here-and-now girls who always highlighted those new lows of dark parking lots. The thought of them in their underwear would be the death of me. Their teardrop breasts always landed me in some shooting gallery of sexual climate where I dodged sharp fingernails, hot knives, and bars. There were worse ways to go out but I knew that if I looked hard enough, somewhere in that rubble was a girl with lips that would make me forget where I was all over again. A touch that would make me never need to be somewhere else, with anybody else. As if you didn’t already know I crowded myself with everything that I have ever connected with just in case that girl was curious. Just in case she didn’t already know everything. In a perfect life you would show me things like girls did when I was younger. Sure I could be doing something with my life but instead I refuse to let go. I have made this my career. I am constantly weeding out. As soon as she comes around I will let it all go. I must be insane to think someone else would want to take over this graveyard shift."