Rating: 4 stars (Spotlight Review)
From random dark thoughts and angst-ridden apologies, to personal successes and once-in-a-lifetime moments, D.R. Haney’s Subversia is a collection of personal essays and a fast ride on the wild side.
At first Haney sets the tone with I Was A Child Porn Model, where he recounts his summer at camp with an amateur pedophile. Told through the eyes of a naïve child, the story is both innocently-horrifying and darkly-comedic. Then he reaches down into a deep bag of anguish to reveal painful moments of love and loss in Death Of A Unicorn and That’s What I’ve Been Trying To Tell You.
There are also a few random encounters, such as Ice Cream, Heroin and A Chance Encounter at Ralph's when Haney runs into musician Elliott Smith in a grocery store at 3 a. m. shortly before Smith commits suicide. Or during his stint in NYC when he crosses paths with Farrah Fawcett and yells out, “Farrah! You’re Beautiful! I love You!", retold in an essay of the same name.
Haney’s writing is honest and direct; whether he’s fantasizing about killing his talkative girlfriend (and then sharing that thought with her) or taking a shower for his camp counselor’s private Kodak moment—no matter how ugly, Haney just puts it out there without care or thought to judgment.
As often the case with the life of a writer, Haney had to scrounge to make ends meet; which usually included a host of random, dead-end jobs. Maybe living on the fringe is how writers like Haney develop their style and get their edge. Writing about scraping your way to the top would lose all credibility with a silver spoon sticking out of your mouth.
Some of the events in Haney’s life should serve as a cautionary tale, while others conjure up imagery of a dead man walking—illustrated by his near-fatal confrontation with a car—but D.R. Haney survived and has proven that those walks, though they may be fraught with pain and regret, can still be long and successful.
After reaching the end of Subversia, a quote from Dazed and Confused kept running through my mind that sort of sums up Haney's compilation: “All I'm saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life - remind me to kill myself.”
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Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: TNB Books (October 9, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0982859803