More High Praise!
Allen Bramhall, reviewed the Horde on his blog, Tributary. If you're too lazy to click on the link, we've poached one of the best parts for your reading pleasure.
I thought of William Gaddis (as in: the author of JR) for how intricate relationships perform subtle machinations. Flann O’Brien, to whose name should be attached the great., also comes to mind for the vivid invention of plot and character. Some slightly apocalyptic events occur in the plot. The story almost becomes unwieldy, but David reins it in, and his humour really resonates.
In case you're thinking that Bramhall only wrote this review because he is one of David Prior's friends, well think again. It turns out he is always writing reviews about stuff like Yoke of the Horde. Case in point!
High Praise for The Yoke of the Horde is not limited solely to this website
Anymore. And no, David Prior's mom hasn't started a blog. You can find a real honest to goodness review at Small Press Reviews.
By the way, perhaps you're thinking that the author of this review was paid, or that he was offered baseball tickets or something in return for lofty praise. For the record, no compensation whatsoever was offered for the review. Nor was the critic subject to any threats or bullying, he simply wrote it because that's the way that he felt. It should be added, that the person who wrote this isn't some kid with a website, this guy is Marc Schuster, a real writer, who has written a bunch of books himself, including The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, which has gotten a lot of good reviews too, but what do you expect, the man above all has GOOD TASTE.
Why would I want to pay for something like this? YOU DON'T HAVE TO, IT'S FREE!!
Ask enough incisive questions at a dinner party and you'll soon find out that, despite what people say, most of the greatest works of literature are propped up like hallowed totems on our shelves, but not read. Sure, everybody knows that Proust loved madeleines, because it gets mentions about 15 pages into In Search of Lost Time, and everybody laughs about the windmills in Don Quixote, because that happens almost as soon as he first gets on his horse. However, ask somebody about Prousts' collection of Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts (page 1218) or Dan Quixote's fight with the three drunken gigolos (page 799) and you are likely to encounter a pronounced lessening of that collective fervor for extraordinary literature. And why is this? Because what makes literature great is that it is not read!
Enter into this formula The Yoke of the Horde! Since writing it I have handed this book out to countless friends and acquaintences, and so far (based on my furtively quizzing them afterwards) they have collectively read only about 68 pages of it. If that doesn't pass the smell test of greatness, I don't know what does.
But, you might ask, don't you have to have more than just your friends and family not read it? Isn't it important to have as many people not read it as possible if it is going to be truly great?
Absolutely! And that's why I am giving it away for free! So that now everybody can take part in developing this book's legacy. With proper care and maintenance, this book will make you look prohibitively well read. All you need to do is place it on your book shelf. A passing reference to it with little or no information, will leave your friends beguiled and confused. Rather than ask you about it, they'll feel the necessity of playing along, and before you know it they'll be telling their friends that you are really well read, to the point of even having read such esoteric masterpieces like, you guessed it, The Yoke of the Horde.
Why is The Yoke of the Horde being suppressed?
A recent list of top 100 books of all time listed The Yoke of the Horde as 7th. Sure, it could be argued that TYOTH should have been ranked higher, but what's more distressing to Yoke fans is the fact that they still are unable to read their favorite book, thanks in part to the evil publishing company Corchester, Button, and Finkle. These creeps are refusing to let the world read TYOTH because they claim that due to some snafu they "accidentally published it as a third grade history book" and shipped it out to some school in Iowa. In a poorly worded letter (especially for a publishing company) written to David Prior, the official author of TYOTH, Corchester claimed that the "incident caused us great shame, especially considering how truly abysmal your novel was."
They were so bent out shape about the whole ordeal that they refuse to hand back the rights to the novel. But, Corchester has not gotten off so easy. A small faction of the third grade class who received TYOTH as a history book valiantly refused to return their books despite threats from the evil Kimberly Waitkus, the CEO of Corchester, Button, and Finkle (who I hate by the way). These children, little angels really, have done their very best to preserve the twelve extant copies of the book and have been spending their free time, not playing Play Station like their peers, but faithfully reproducing TYOTH word for word so that its legacy will live on in pdf form.
An Excerpt
Scott resembles a man stretched out in a carnival mirror, only lying prone on Flora's couch. Half way through his third bag of corn chips, and surrounded by half a dozen empty forty once bottles of 'Old Squirrel Hill' malt liquor, Scott still does not make the impression of one who ingests more than the minimum amount needed for human consumption. Everything about him is lanky. His hair is short with the exception of the long stringy bands that hang off the back of his neck. His so-called 'muscle' shirt reads "No Fear," and his jeans tightly encase two long skinny legs, which lead like country roads to his pair of size 14 basketball shoes. His face is wrinkly, long, and remarkably out of proportion. He wears a pair of black glasses, thick because as he told Flora just the other day, "I got my eyeball kicked out of my head once." Read more of this wonderful crap.
Start a Yoke of the Horde Fan Club Today!
Yoke of the Horde fanclubs are springing up across the country. Let us know if you would like to start a TYOTH fanclub, and we'll set you up whatever black market weapons systems we can get our hands on.