I was in London because it was Claire Carroll’s book launch at The Social W1W 7JD me and my friend Jess Payn attended together. We met Joshua Jones of (more short stories) Local Fires (2023) and did not m e e t Ben Pester but heard him read from his Boiler-House-Press-published (also short stories) Am I in the Right Place? (2021). Another of his stories, in the rooms of e-existent Hotel (2017-22), that is * so funny * I’d fell upon earlier is ‘If YES’, a short egg story. It seems a great many great writers have been obsessed with eggs at some point in their careers has anyone else noticed this? ‘If YES’ is an office gambol framed in a user-satisfaction feedback form by Ben Pester. A Large Egg is surprise-delivered at the work-place to which “Ben” (main character) and colleagues are “deeply attracted”. Its proximity mystically effects an “instant Alpha brainwave state” causing powerful primal-corporate cameraderie and, ultimately, business (“start-up”) productivity. Of course, there is an oviparous in the egg and I was l-o-l-ing at the strength of the tension-building (snort-worthy single line paragraphs) Ben Pester achieves re speculation over what will be inside the oeuf. Things of course get dreadful and I say a real Oh no reading ‘If YES’ it’s so eggishly palpable. Commerce dialect looms massive as our cultish capacities under late-late-late-stage Capitalismo are so well allegoried. See also Seven Rooms: Assorted materials from a Paper Hotel (2023), Hotel-on-web’s paper component.
Within the rooms of Hotel online here, Tenement Press & Prototype 2017-22
A Personal Anthology 