This is great stuff. At first, it took me a chapter or two to get the rhythm of Dege's characters' speech, this backwater Louisiana drawl that he captures with this modernist stream-of-thinking writing. But once I got the voice in my head, every episode was hilarious. My favorite was "Junkyard Love", the story of a band of hilbillies smashing and junking cars. It's hilarious and best read in a Camaro up on blocks with some Skynard playing.

Jan 28, 2006

So I was reading The "Battle Hymn" on a plane... and this elderly lady was reading over my shoulder with a puzzled curiosity until the chapter about fucking electrified snakemeat. The look on her face was magical. Then she whispered to her husband and didn't look in my direction for the rest of the flight.

From: Dr.Yes
To: Dege

I can't get yer book out of my mind. Seriously better than Milton's Paradise Lost. Really competes with Blake and Coleridge, but they really don't get so close to the bone as you do.

I read the chapter where dad lectures the kids on knowing shit, like state flower, etc, out loud to my wife. She was falling about. She asked if you had been eavesdropping in our house. I told her "no, honey, but this is proof that I am doing the right fucking thing around here, so I never want you to question me ever again with regard to my methods".

That snake fucking thing - man, I howled out loud. Saw my brother fuck a frozen chicken once (while wearing our mom's underwear), but that shit was nothing compared to this. Because of ELECTRICITY. You, see, you always got some other extraelement going on that takes yer stuff into the realm of genius.

I am absolutely not joking. Genius. Now here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna order a box of your books (just as soon as the cocksuckers who've owed me money for the last year, and the other one's that owe me for the last twenty pay up) and give them as early Christmas presents. Yes, I'm going to mail them to my friends, all over the world. And those who are writers will put down their pens in awe, and wonder if their efforts are really worth anything. And those who are readers will have a religiousexperience.

I am putting a less genius book in the mail for you. However, it does take place in the lower half of Misery, not too far from the Arkansas border....

Be careful

Yer friend

Dr Yes

"Burning with originality and white-hot creativity, Dege Legg paints an unforgettable portrait of a unique southern family that is both demented and hilarious. Not for the faint at heart." -Kevin McHugh, Doom-Metal.com

"Zatan Only Rhymes With Satan:
Strange Tome Makes Free Thinking a Guilty Pleasure"
by Walter Pierce


A whirlwind tour through social depravity, cultural isolation and many things submarginal, The Battle Hymn of the Good'Ole Hillbilly Zatan Boys is one of those curiousl literary concoctions that casts ifself in opposition to fiction's dominant mode: a fragmented discourse of living, loving, and languishing in post-modern America. Written by an enigmatic Dege Santeria, the nom de plume of a Lafayette musician, Battle Hymn is at least a good book insofar as its frenetic, imaginative language and pacing propel its haphazard plot to absurd extremes of logic and argument. Published by desktop (or beneath) enterprise GolarWash Labs, Battle Hymn centers around the cranky, wise Elron Zatan, patriarch of the Sluzkill Mountain (Arkansas) Zatan clan, a wild bunch of rabble-rousers who, because of their distinct antithesis in relation to mainstream culture, become a lens for viewing the American wasteland. Highly episodic in a Confederacy of Dunces way, Battle Hymn shows sparks of confident, mature writing. Santeria falters occasionally in maintaining the electric tone and pace, and a number of passages will unnerve all but the hardiest readers, but Battle Hymn deserves a serious if detached read.
Elron rings curiously like L.Ron, as in L.Ron Hubbard, the dianetics guy and founder of the Church of Scientology. And indeed our hillbilly psychopath presides over an uncanny clan. But is there a correspondence? Unfortunately, the context clues are too infrequent, to woven into outrageous episode, and reflect too little light.
Battle Hymn holds its enigmas pretty close, offering fleeting glimpses like a mall pervert flashing open the raincoat for a guerilla matinee of his naked middle region. But it's a fascinating text, a certifiable barreling, hopped-up '72 BelAir through the literary trash heap, and the rats scatter like mad.
A typical passage, relating to Elron's place of employ:
"It wasn't easy. It was a job only for those types of men who'd exhausted all of their luck and family graces. Harcore losers. Ex-drug fiends. Tenured alcoholics. Snaggle-toothed morons with jackhammer arms. Failed theives and boosters. Paroled ex-cons. And longshot losers who'd blow their last cent on a Texas flyswatter in Waco. They were the only men desperate enough to stick it out at the yard longer than a week. Or a day."
It's in the book's epilogue, the Outro, where Elron Zatan, scarred Vietnam vet, hillbilly hell-raiser, lays out his philosophy of life, which in relation to the fragmented, episodic story that precides it, is effectively simple and elegant: think for yourself, avoid the soul-dead majority, use your imagination, chase your dream.
Elron is a literary hero who at least believes what he says, even if it's spewed from a drunken stupor or a manic rage.


-Walter Pierce
24/7 Magazine