Stripmalling, Jon Paul Fiorentino

Sounding like a manic version of the Stage Manager from Our Town, Jon Paul Fiorentino begins his latest novel by intoning, “Old-time strip malls…A town with all-night huffing parties and decrepit community clubs…A town to forget or mythologize in order to remember strategically.”  Stripmalling is a wacky, episodic ode to the strip malls of yesteryear (read: the late 80’s and early 90’s) that served as stomping grounds for Fiorentino and his friends.

Fiorentino’s prose borrows many forms: memoir, graphic novel, instructions, interview transcript, company pamphlets.  The book is a compilation of episodes featuring Jonny (the main character), who wants to be a writer but works at a gas station at a strip mall.  Lest the reader assume that the book is purely autobiographical, Fiorentino explains, “It’s a novel in many voices—all of them mine: the character Jonny, the writer Jonny, and the miserable real life Jonny.  But please note that, as usual, all three Jonnies are fictional.”  There are (at least) two central, parallel plotlines: the stripmall is bulldozed and replaced by the enormous Hypermart, and a down-and-out Jonny rediscovers his abilities as a writer as he transcribes memories of his teachers, relationships, and family.

Fiorentino is achingly funny.  In one of the best scenes, Jonny describes his lust for a devout girl at his church.  In order to woo her, Jonny pretends to speak in tongues, but is horrified when “what came out sounded less holy and exactly like David Lee Roth scatting in ‘Just a Gigolo.’”  Jonny’s intelligent girlfriend Dora also provides humour and sass through her “Dora Reports,” and comments on Jonny’s writing, “If Jonny doesn’t tell you what happened to our strip mall then I will.  Deal?”  Obsessed with cycles of constructing and demolishing, of remembering and inventing, Stripmalling pays tribute to the performance of storytelling.