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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
a roller coaster ride through inner demons and dreams Nov 18, 2010
By the missus
this storys about a young aspiring artist that wants to take on the world but is held back by umerous things like his gf, family, friends, college, drugs, moiney and everyday battles - like his inner demons. the main character is a bit abrasive at times - swears alot!, also a bit complex, but he has a certain charisma, charm an dark sense of humor that i absolutely adored. the story is long - 600 pgs, but uniquely detailed. starts off overwhelming but becomes something like a roller coaster ride. when you finally get off its like WOW!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Not your ordinary debut novel Apr 29, 2010
By E. L. Szymonik
On 12/20, I started Catapult Soul. On 2/20, I finished it. Those 2 months were memorable because the book was quite a ride. It is an emotional investment. It's long, descriptive, and slow at first, but the central character Vincent Vallano's first person narrative is engaging.
The key to enjoying this novel is to buy it and start it immediately. I guarantee you by the end, you still have a sense of "WOW" and may want to reread it again.
4 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Soul Searching Mar 21, 2009
By jjd232
"Catapult Soul" is a remarkable work of heart and soul. The protagonist is Vincent "V" Vallano, a sarcastic but lovable outcast. The story begins with V giving a short historical account of Pittsburgh and the steel industry, humorously detailing how a poor Pittsburgher invented the steel-making process but because of bankruptcy was bought out by a wealthy Englishman. Then it jumps to V's home life. His mother is a shy immigrant from Sicily and his father is a hateful steel miller. At the beginning of the story, it's implied that V is around 17 because he's "getting things ready" and by the third chapter he's off to a private college in Maryland where he soon falls in love with Ivy Pineda. She might be the only sane person in the story, meaning she doesn't have much baggage, she's pretty levelheaded, and lives a typical suburban life. In V's eyes, she's an innocent sweetheart whose beauty is unmatched, which means he needs to"power up" on her hair because it has a magical taste he can't resist (this tongue-in-cheek phenomenon is better illustrated by him). However, he starts things off on the wrong foot because after finally chewing on her hair all night in an orchard, he ends up breaking his leg at party, semi-OD'ing on painkillers, and blowing her off for a week. Light problems compared to what follows...
V's best friend also decides to move down to Maryland to be with Ivy's best friend. They become addicted to heroin, and V is left trying to save his best friend. One by one, bigger problems unfold, such as the events of 9/11, V accumulating school loans and credit card debt, the potential foreclosure of his childhood home, and his calling to become an artist and to do it now. What's remarkable about "Catapult Soul" is that you experience the beauty of language in many different styles. The dialogue is spot-on, though it took some time to adjust to it. There's literally thousands of wordplays and allusions, which reminded me of Joyce but without putting a burden on the story. There's also narrative tricks and symbols that call the entire story into question, which begins on the title page and ends on the back cover. Truth be told, it's not until the second half of the book that things break free from your standard coming-of-age story. Chapter 22 is probably the most notable aspect of the work. V goes on a bombastic tear, fighting against the invisible evils he sees plaguing society. This is also where you get acquainted with the "real" V and the love story (the main focus of Part I and II) opens up many new perspectives. Despite having many postmodern features, the story blatantly rejects being called postmodern. V insists and even demonstrates how he's "real" and how this book is not a postmodern fictional work but an autobiographical work struggling to "catch up" to his present state, which, for me, turned it into a satire on both postmodernism and tortured artist stories. Hands down one of the most rewarding books I've read. Funny, experimental, classical, challenging, and emotional all in one.
a bold and innovative sleeper! Apr 27, 2012
By kmun031gr
a bold and innovative sleeper! celio has made a statement: he is the most fearless fiction writer alive. this book deserves to be a future classic!
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
An Atheist's Perspective Jan 05, 2010
By Bombs-R-Us
When I first opened this book and read the title page, I said to myself, "Great, another gimmicky book." In large lettering I saw Vincent Vallano struck-out and footnoted. In the footnote I saw Brian Celio struck-out and footnoted. In its footnote three question marks struck-out and footnoted to a parenthetical 22. Seemed like a bunch of nonsense. I was already annoyed.
Thankfully those footnotes didn't bleed too heavily into the story and eventually worked themselves out, all the way up to the back cover. Now walking myself back through it, I see everything as an inside-joke, both on the author's part and Vallano's part.
Undoubtedly this book is written at high degree of precision and intelligence, which is why I second-guessed some of the questionable situations only to forgive them. For example: His mom being the Italian immigrant who speaks in broken English, his dad being the racist lunatic rambling off drunken babble, Dr. Rosenbaum being the mystical professor who knows the way to enlightenment, Father Carr being the cheerfully insistent priest, Ivy being the naive virgin sweetheart. Then the snippets of existential philosophy, the stream-of-consciousness passages, the random poems, the hard times of a tortured artist. Really, I would have been inclined to say that the author was full of himself and had steered himself into banality on several occasions if there wasn't constant redemption and undercutting. Thankfully the author appears to be fully aware of his absurdness and pokes fun of it and has his protagonist do the same. It just requires, at times, a second glance to see how it's done and why, and why only becomes clearer towards the end of the book. A lot of patience required.
That aside, I can confidently say this book runs the full gamut of emotions like no other. It is, at times, hateful, bitter, cocky, vengeful, and unapologetic. But Vallano has many redeeming qualities like his ability to admit when he's wrong, hypocritical, and unnecessarily mean. More often than not he saves himself with his sense of humor and ability to check himself. It was also nice to have Vallano keep an open mind towards the treasure of knowledge in the world while remaining firm in his deepest beliefs, particularly towards God. As someone who admires Nietzsche and Shelley and the band Bad Religion, with a tendency to have strange existential drifts, it's almost hard to believe his claim as a Christian (of sorts), but he does manage to make sense of it.
But my favorite character was by far Pessi. Minus his drug use, I found much of his simplicity admirable and believable. I also love that he seems to be an atheist. He doesn't claim any political affiliations. And really, I think Vallano's deep respect for Pessi comes from the implication that Vallano would rather be more like Pessi: a carefree rebel who isn't "conscious" of such matters, doesn't care about art or college or making it in the world. I think Vallano realizes many of his contradictions and silliness through his reflections on Pessi. For me, in a cast of characters vying for the reader to side with them, Pessi is the one who provokes the most pity while never asking for it and has the demeanor of rejecting it if given, while Vallano just begs for attention on every level he presents himself (character, author, narrator, "a real person").
Teresa, on the other hand, begs for attention within the actual story, that is, towards the other characters. I found her to be hilarious despite all the wreckage she causes. The way she "fa-king" swears and carries herself like she's larger than life is too funny. But she isn't just a prop for comedy. Even Vallano admires her "evil genius" and is conscious of the importance she's adding to his story. Makes me wonder if he would have wanted her to be any other way?
As for Ivy, I tolerated her crap with a grain of salt throughout the story but I wanted to strangle her at the end. She ended up being half-delusional half-cowardly. You can feel that she should have said a little something more than what she does. Despite her facade of "understanding" and "doing this the right way" she appears to be nothing more than another product of the system, another undistinguished pod profiting from someone else's sacrifice. I would like to call that the true final irony. When I think about that, the ending, I have to say that this can all be chalked up to the author's brilliant commentary on human weakness and what happens when we don't develop our own dreams and follow them until the end.
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