Anything but Regular Default - A Review of SHITSHOW by Chris Panatier

“If you can give the kids a good time then that’s all it’s for. Forget art and all that – that’s bullshit. If you can send that shiver down a kid’s back then that’s what it’s all about. All else is bullshit."

-Lemmy

I wouldn't dare suggest author Chris Panatier would ever throw concern for art aside in his literary endeavors. A rising star in horror fiction, Panatier is an author and illustrator with several novels under his belt as well as doing all of the art for Rapture Publishing's chapbook series. Following his successful and lauded literary horror novel, The Redemption of Morgan Bright, his new novel Shitshow from Sobelo Books feels like a surprising turn toward the gutter in the best of ways.

Equal measure comedy and horror, Shitshow follows Sunday McWhorter, a latrine technician with a heart of gold and a deep love for Mötorhead. He's the guy that sucks the blue and brown sludge from the porta potties and replaces it. He drives the honeywagon or "Honey," a mobile septic tank on wheels they let him take back to his trailer as his primary vehicle. Sunday lives with his mother, Regina, an elderly woman with dementia who is quickly losing touch with reality. The money and insurance he gets from toilet work is his motivation for keeping such a shitty job. While he's out cleaning crappers, Ms. Poppy, his Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey chugging neighbor, looks after his mother in exchange for a few bottles of the good stuff. It's not a glamorous life but glamor isn't Sunday's thing. He's more concerned with keeping things "regular default."

During a rash of missing persons cases, all surrounding county fairs, Sunday discovers the remnants of a man's face stewing in the blue biocide of one of his latrines at a carnival. The cops pawn the evidence off on Sunday who gets stuck hauling the offending shitter back to his trailer park where he soon discovers its supernatural power. Sunday's mother is haunted by voices and not long after goes missing. In Sunday's attempts to find her he draws the suspicion of Deputy Gaynes, or Donut Shark, a comical Barney Fife type with good instincts that are completely impeded by incompetence and systemic failings. Toward the latter half the book a Doc Marten clad Gen Z "kid" joins Sunday's quest that could carry an entire book on her own.

Shitshow is a short book so it would be easy to give too much away. There's a winking, comical selfawareness in the prose. Just before a horrific encounter, a young man getting ready to get intimate with his date excalims "holy shit" as they enter the porta potty, to which the woman tugging at his Wranglers heartily agrees. Panatier is clearly having fun whipping up wacky but impactful similies and metaphors that give the read a folksy downhome feel that fits right in with the Texas trailer park setting. During the same steamy moment mentioned above we get, "... the bit of him Jess held in her hand shriveled up like a gas station hot dog." Later that same chapter he describes a smell "akin to a wad of catfish bait crammed in a toaster."

Speaking as someone who grew up in a trailerpark, the larger than life characters that populate Sunday's neighborhood feel both honest and accurate. My brother and I were no doubt once real world versions of the Doucet kids, rock throwing hellions running wild at all hours. Ms. Poppy's alcohol use isn't shamed or even really presented as a flaw. While she consumes perhaps problematic amounts of Fireball whiskey, the author doesn't take it upon himself to judge or moralize.

There is a frustrated affection for small towns of Texas running through these pages informed by real local history and saddened by many of the regressive attitudes that dominate small town life. I definitely want a sip of that bootleg Dr. Pepper from Dublin.

As this is a dark carnival book, one might think Ray Bradbury and the literary DNA is certainly there but I got more Killer Clowns from Outerspace and Bubba Hotep vibes. I kept imagining this as a microbudget Coscareli affair in my mind. Devoted readers of Shortwave's Killer VHS line would surely find a treat in Shitshow. The narrator, a well handled close third, even makes references to movie-like moments like certain facial expressions that you only know from film.

The dementia aspect of the story is handled with love, care and brutal honesty. Anyone struggling with family history of alzheimers or the like may find that this fun silly spookshow about haunted toilets packs far heavier of an emotional punch than they bargained for, especially in those final chapters. The horror of losing your memories, identity, and, in a sense, loved ones courses through this book.

Yes, Shitshow is a heavy metal, VHS distorted freakout about family, generational trauma, aging, grief and loss. It's also about the overlooked microcommunities that pop up in all of our lives and carry us through the day. Given the emotional weight of Shitshow's conclusion, perhaps we chose the wrong Mötorhead quote to start out for Panatier. While in the novel Sunday worships Lemmy, Panatier might be more of a Philthy Animal guy. Like Phil, he's a fucking artist, he's sensitive as shit! Shitshow likely won't dazzle the literary scolds from your average MFA program but fuck 'em. Knowlege is knowing where to find a great burger. Wisdom is knowing that once you take class and status out of it, they're just as good as any fine steak. I'll take regular default over the fancy stuff any day.

Mötorhead's Philthy Phil Taylor

Shitshow hits shelves September 2nd from Sobelo Books. Preorder it today. Below are links to purchase from some of our favorite independently owned booksellers in St. Louis, with which we share no affiliation.