Daniel Allen Cox's debut novel, "Shuck," is a breath of fresh air. Jaeven Marshall stars in porn films, poses for nudie mags, and peddles his services to the desperate gays of New York as a hustler to pay for his two favorite vices: meth and fiction writing.
The closest we get to a traditional narrative are entries in Jaeven's journals. These document his rise from low budget prostitute to high end rentboy, a self-proclaimed "Boy New York." We also get a glimpse of an ongoing relationship with a man named Derek whom Jaeven sleeps in the same bed with nightly but does not consummate the relationship. We wonder throughout the book whether the relationship will ever come to fruition, and don't mind being distracted by Jaeven's melancholic digressions about what he finds in garbage cans, what the items say about New York in the 90's. We are also happily distracted by myriad lists and collections of objects Jaeven gives us in order for us to see the stunning, the sad, the gray puddle that is his life from which he is looking up from under.
These lists and collections of items supplement a fragmented narrative in a very clever way. This is one of the main reasons I believe "Shuck" to be as successful as it is. For the aspiring writers we have the collections of literary magazine rejections Jaeven receives for his short stories, from Tin House to The New York Times Magazine--many of them personalized rejections, which tend to be the most revealing. For the porn junkies we have collections of all the magazines that are out there: magazines for size queens, ethnic fetishes, twink love, any kind of porn novelty you can imagine. And there are those that you can't. For lovers of language we have lists that border on the poetic, even if they're about the gradations of different kinds of urine: "amber molasses, lemongrass, oxidized copper, diluted tea, bruised spleen, chicken soup, nicotine ceiling...etc."
So, there is something for everyone in "Shuck." Most importantly a new voice, illuminating and fresh--bound to shake things up in a literary world where the books everybody reads are dictated by a talk show host with a first name that rhymes with coprah. This book most certainly wouldn't be recommended by her. Which is more than enough reason to go out and buy it as fast as you can.
