The Psycho of Happiness

"The Psycho of Happiness" is a fine collection of psychedelically laced, location based, fantasy & autobiographical sketches from the College plus years of a talented young writer. Craig Douglas is the author of Pleasure/Time (1970) & Our Loving World (2000) [R & XXX Rated FutureSex Adventures]

Scott Campbell's story collection is diverse, that's for sure! There's lots of laughs, and lots of sex and memorable characters. I especially enjoyed reading "Ice Ice Baby" and "Whaat you see is what you see" and "Patience is a doctor". I guess those are the kind of freaky, wierd ones, but I thought they were great.And I'm dying to know more about the character of Lulu, she is so well-rounded and interesting. I hope another volume is on it's way, and hooray for the return of the short story! Scott Campbell is right up there with all the others publishing great short fiction these days.

This book is so funny, that's the main thing I thought of it. And it's so easy to read, it has a real conversational prose style, like the conversations we all have in our heads about the things that baffle us and the things we obsess about. It's good to know someone else (Campbell) thinks about that stuff too and can write about it so well that we can all relate to it.

I loved these stories. Scott Campbell has a wicked sense of humor and clearly adores and is mystified by the relationships between men and women, whether they're lovers or friends or siblings or coworkers or strangers in a dark alley. Since I am similarly mystified, these stories held my interest and made me laugh (nervously at times). When Campbell's stories get bizarre, they're even funnier. I laughed out loud through "The People Who Live In the Parking Lot" (with its characters so bizarre only to those of us who don't know anyone anywhere like them, and yet so realistically painted that we know they must exist somewhere), and "What You See Is What You See" (a comic adventure of paranoid fantasy that made me all at once envy and fear and mock the main character). Scott Campbell's writing in general belies an openness to the truly perverted motives that sometimes drive seemingly normal people. He also has an incredible ear for naturalistic dialogue. So often when I read dialogue, I find myself thinking, NOBODY ACTUALLY TALKS like that! But not with Campbell's dialogue; it's clear he's an expert eavesdropper and note-taker (as a writer should be). And, oh yeah, on the topics of dialogue, AND men & women, AND humor, AND perversity.... the Dean & Daisy scenes were so...REAL! Too real! Who hasn't been in a f**ked up relationship like that?! These stories were just plain fun to read. A friend gave me my copy of "The Psycho of Happiness," and now I want to give it to someone, but I'm buying my own brand new copy first.