{"id":6918,"date":"2015-10-31T07:31:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T14:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2015-11-10T08:50:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T15:50:51","slug":"home-is-burning-by-dan-marshall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/10\/31\/home-is-burning-by-dan-marshall\/","title":{"rendered":"HOME IS BURNING by Dan Marshall"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The Guradian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Home Is Burning: the profanity-laced terminal illness memoir with fart jokes<\/h1>\n

Dan Marshall\u2019s book about his father\u2019s death \u2013 while his mother was stricken with cancer \u2013 is possibly the most scatalogical memoir of its kind ever, and now Hollywood has come knocking<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"The Marshall family on 22 September 2008, the day of Bob\u2019s death. (Left to right): Dan, Michelle, Tiffany, Bob, Chelsea, Debi, Greg. Photograph: Gary Neuenschwander\/Supplied<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Marshall\u00a0<\/a>sips an iced coffee under a Los Angeles sun and mulls the notion of Hollywood sanitising his memoir, the story of how he and his siblings dealt with terminally ill parents during an anguished year in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City. Marshall shakes his head and gives a faint smile. \u201cIt\u2019d tear the balls off the thing if they made it PG-13.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would indeed.\u00a0Home Is Burning<\/a>, published this month and due to be made into a film, dives deep into the pain and grief of caring for a father who slowly wastes away, and a mother who hovers close to death. It also plumbs the cacophonous dysfunction of a family stumbling through the ordeal with black humour, fart jokes, painkillers, booze, feuds, sex and swearing \u2013 epic, ungodly, obscene, unrepentant, relentless swearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll have to be R-rated,\u201d says Marshall. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of death and dying but with South Park humour applied to normally difficult and sentimental situations. I\u2019m making jokes about wiping my dad\u2019s ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 300-page memoir jokes about everything: the cruelty of\u00a0amyotrophic lateral sclerosis<\/a>\u00a0(ALS), also known as\u00a0Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease<\/a>, which killed Bob Marshall in 2008; the brutal side effects of Debi Marshall\u2019s cancer treatment; the vicious sibling arguments; the pious Mormon neighbours.<\/p>\n

One unforgettable section details Debi\u2019s declaration that she will perform oral sex on her husband \u2013 by then confined to a bed and respirator \u2013 daily until he dies. \u201cMy mom was beyond proud of the blow-job-a-day goal. I don\u2019t know if it was because she was all fucked up on Fentanly or what, but she seemed to bring it up any chance she got. \u2018A blow job a day. Not a bad deal,\u2019 I heard her explain to a visitor. \u2018You wouldn\u2019t think it, but his penis is still strong.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Marshall clan is barging into a terminal illness genre rife with sentimentality \u2013 think\u00a0The Fault in Our Stars<\/a>,\u00a0Before I Die<\/a>,\u00a0Tuesdays with Morrie<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 with a unique strain of profane, scatological humour. Prominent memoirists have endorsed Home Is Burning.\u00a0James Frey<\/a>, author of A Million Little Pieces, called it hilarious and heartbreaking.\u00a0Justin St Germain, author of Son of a Gun<\/a>, deemed it self-aware and ruthlessly honest: \u201cDan Marshall might be a self-described spoiled white jerk, but he\u2019s also a depraved comedic genius.\u201d\u00a0Publishers Weekly called him<\/a>\u00a0the literary love child of Dave Eggers and David Sedaris.<\/p>\n

In person Marshall, 33, is softly spoken, almost shy. He mocks himself in the memoir as a dumpy, boozy, gummy bear-chomping screw-up. But the figure who settles into the corner of a restaurant terrace, seeking shade on a baking afternoon, is somewhat reformed. He has quit drinking, jogs and has, by his own measure, matured.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Guradian Home Is Burning: the profanity-laced terminal illness memoir with fart jokes Dan Marshall\u2019s book about his father\u2019s death \u2013 while his mother was stricken with cancer \u2013 is possibly the most scatalogical memoir of its kind ever, and now Hollywood has come knocking The Marshall family on 22 September 2008, the day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}