Stephen Florida

Like sledding down a hill on a piece of cardboard, hurtling towards a cliff, bailing too late and tumbling, limbs snapping like twigs as you become another piece of debris to careen over the edge. The chaos at the center of Stephen Florida is unrelenting, his drive to wrestle both pitifully insignificant and the only thing that has and will ever matter. To what degree any of what's happening is real or true is irrelevant to the kinetic energy that starts fully built on page one and refuses to decelerate until crashing headfirst into the acknowledgements.

The only comparison I can reach for are Johnny's chapters from House of Leaves, both painting images of isolated, angry men rapidly detaching themselves from reality until all that's left is their own paranoia. If you found Johnny's depraved ramblings hard to stomach I would recommend leaving Stephen Florida off your list (or at least heeding the content warnings because there is a lot of shit sprinkled between lines through these brief 289 pages). I have discovered that few books are more engaging to me than those concerning masculinity's proclivity towards antisocial self destruction. I'm not yet sure what to make of this information.

Stephen Florida is a college wrestler with a clear-eyed, bordering on megalomaniacal, focus on winning the Division IV NCAA championship in the 133 weight category. He's a full on meaty jock completely in his own head. At turns sounding like an adolescent sportbro then veering into post-grad philosophy student that's into jazz into paranoid crazy-person with stalker tendencies.

He's fascinating to read but not anyone you'd ever want to run into in a supply closet or lying in the tall grass outside your house.

It's hard to believe that this is a debut novel - it's so far out there in terms of subject matter. We bookish folk have no problem empathizing with murderous AIs, lonely ghosts and facially deformed grade-schoolers, but an entire book centered around a jock in his senior year solely focused on wrestling? Who decides that's the hill you're going to plant your authorial flag on?

I know squat about wrestling and even writing about it Habash could be fashioning his own language of terms and moves - but it doesn't matter if it's even true - it reads like music.
It isn't mechanical, it doesn't coyly veer into the homoerotic or purely metaphorical - it's compelling. It's Moby Dick loosely played out on the vinyl surface of college wrestling mats and it surprised me how much I enjoyed this book. Gabe Habash makes it worth exploring the inside of Stephen Florida's head.