Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino

I love controversial books. Banned books, books by authors with pseudonyms and false identities, fictional books that have been passed off as non-fiction, books that take risks, and even books that play with a reader’s mind. I love these types of books because they push the envelope and help to expand our concepts of what makes something worth reading. They are experimental, and just as in the scientific world, these experiments may bring more questions than insights.

Jon Paul Fiorentino’s first novel, Stripmalling (ECW Press, 2009), is one such book. Critics have both panned and praised the structure of the book, which incorporates elements of a graphic novel with cartoons by Evan Munday, “out-takes” from the characters’ relationships (or the author’s sketches thereof) included at the back of the book, and Fiorentino’s seemingly autobiographical take on life in a Transcona stripmall. The book follows its protagonist, Jonny, from the fear and loathing of suburban Manitoba to the glamour and glitz of everyday drinking in downtown Montreal, where the fragmented story line ultimately shatters.

There are moments in Stripmalling that seem brilliant, and others that appear merely forced. Jonny is sometimes a clever and even observant narrator, like when he comments “If you want to develop a cocaine habit, or if you want to develop bedsores, Montreal is the place for you.” It’s not the type of thing you’ll see printed in a tourist’s guidebook, and many residents will find the comment cruel, but it’s not far wrong, either. Oddly enough, however, Fiorentino seems to prefer the stripmall ugliness of Transcona to the supposed romance and opportunity of big-city Montreal, as most of the action of the story takes place in the dreaded stripmall. Indeed, Jonny falls in love with Dora (who encourages his writing habits and supports him throughout the book) in this supposed wasteland, which makes the reader wonder whether corporate greed and the homogenization of the landscape is such a bad thing after all. Sure, it may ultimately destroy their livelihood (i.e. working at the stripmall), but doesn’t tragedy make one stronger?

As for Jonny himself, he is a bitter man, a drowning man smothered by his own self-involvement, and so readers must take him with a grain of salt, perhaps by laughing at him rather than with him at times. Still, he can be hilarious in his self-destruction, as in the chapter “Mystery Shopped!” and even capable of tenderness, as in “University of Suck.”

He is, in the end, a metafictional anti-hero for the new millennium; an experimental creature too weird to live, too rare to die, and certainly never intended for mass-production.

Further Resources

- Read Laura Roberts’ interview with Jon Paul Fiorentino in Black Heart Magazine and her related post in protest of bitchy reviews on her blog, Laura Roberts, Button Tapper.

- Other interviews with Fiorentio: from Hour.ca (2009), from Coach House Books (2006), the Danforth Review (2002).

- Read about the author’s poetry collections, his humor book Asthmatica, and other publications projects on his website. Fiorentino also edits the magazine Matrix, which publishes essays, fiction, poems, and reviews.

- Visit Evan Munday’s site, I Don’t Like Mundays, to see more of his artwork and a photo of the illustrator/publicist on his tea plantation.

- Watch “The Way of the Smock Trailer: The Making of Stripmalling“: