Profile of an Amazon.com Reviewer: Kevin Killian

Today I walked into Adam's Books, a small local store with an amazing collection of used and new books with topics ranging from Greek myths, and contemporary fiction, to techno-culture.

Right near the entrance on a wooden table there was Kevin Killian's small book, edited by Brent Cullingham, published in 2006 by Hooke Press in Oakland. Printed in a kind of potato stamp or rough silkscreen technique, the cover shows four icons: a book, a diamond, a film projector, and a pair of pants (lederhosen?). The title: Selected Amazon Reviews (the book is not available on Amazon.com).

Cullingham, the Hooke Press editor, chose a few of Killian's 1525 reviews (as of January 7th, 2006) and grouped them in the categories 1) books, 2) film & music, 3) food, shelter & clothing, and 4) luxury items. Killian, who is #129 in the Amazon top-ranked reviewer list (Harriet Klausner is number one with 13050 reviews). He reviews everything from sweet potato baby food, Pasternak's film Doctor Zhivago, Michael Kors khaki shorts, and The Black & Decker Crossfire Auto Level Laser, to Giorgio Agamben's book State of Emergency.

These are the reviews of Kevin Killian who is a San Francisco-based poet, novelist, critic, and playwright. Find out more about Killian on the Electronic Poetry Center site. He started writing these reviews in December 2001, when he wrote a thank you note to a friend who had send him his new book for his birthday. Instead of sending him the note, he put it up on Amazon.com. But then in 2004 he really got started- writing about two texts a day. So, why does he do it? Well, his writings are not really reviews. They are autobiographical pieces of fiction.  For example, take Killian's review of a 14K ruby necklace, written on January 4th:

"As an American boy growing up in France, I became mesmerized by an enchanting painting of an ancestor that hung never very far from the hearth. The painting, smudged by smoke and damaged by Vichy occupation of the chateau, showed a very thin and angular woman, her face like something reflected in the bowl of a spoon, festooned in bright stones that gleamed out still bright after the passage of many decades. "Who is this woman," I used to wonder out loud, until one evening, as my grandmother passed through the room looking for our vanished cat, "Gateau," I noticed that she wore the same diamond and ruby necklace as the ancestor in the old damaged painting. I persuaded my grandmother to sit down and forget about her eternal hunt for a cat who had died long before I was born, when she was still a young woman not even married to my grandpapa yet, and to tell me about the necklace she wore. She took my little hands in hers and, in a low, breathy whisper, told me how she had stumbled across these precious stones in a valise once. Amazon's 14K Ruby and Diamond "Dynasty" necklace looks like a lot like my family jewels; the resemblance is shocking enough to have made me drop my cocoa while leafing through the jewel pages this morning in an attempt to bring back, madeleine-style, the vanished days of yesteryear."

Killian uses Amazon.com as a platform for his writing practice- a place with an immediate broad readership. I can't help but being fascinated by this project.

(photo of Kevin Killian: Electronic Poetry Center) 

Update on January 8, 2007 at 08:13 by [Trebor]

    also see David Weinberger's comments http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/amazon_reviews_as_genre.html