Abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker, shuttled from one abusive foster home and detention centre to another, Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, and damaged. His hunger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence.
Unavailable for 40 years, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness by one of the most acclaimed authors of the past century. This definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates, unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago, which examines the impact of Gotteson's killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her...
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[I didn't have my guitar any longer]***
(Titan Books, 16 July 2019, first published 1976, 224 pages, ebook, copy from @TitanBooks and voluntarily reviewed)
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I've read this book before; I own a poor quality, battered old paperback I bought years ago. I enjoyed the book at the time at scored it 4 out of 5. I enjoyed it a little more on this second read-through. The novella is presented much better in this format. It still reminded me a lot of her novella . This is not an easy book to read. It is very dark and disturbing. Bobby is an unpleasant person and it's no pleasant being inside his head so much. My impression in the first read-through that I couldn't have stomached being in his head for a full-length book still stands. This is a bold and challenging read and still makes quite an impression.
