Justin Benton

Board Justin Benton

Board is a groundbreaking work of literary collage derived entirely from comment boards at The Nervous Breakdown, an online culture magazine and literary community founded in 2006. It is a unique artifact of the Internet Age and the digital revolution in publishing. It is a cacophony of voices. It is what your computer screen sounds like, only better. It is strangely moving. And painfully honest. And shockingly funny and mean. It is all of these things. And it is essential reading for anyone who spends too much time sitting slack-jawed in front of a computer screen.  
 
"...an unprecedented literary endeavor...beautifully, often poetically written... It?s as if the cultural curiosity of a David Markson were being siphoned through the real life followers of his work in an art-imitating-life-imitating-art-imitating-Markson kerfuffle that?s quite easy to become both engrossed by, and obsessed with... This is one to buy, study, enjoy..." ?HTML Giant  
 
"Expertly interweaving its leitmotifs?technology, dreams, sex food, 'identity politics,' death?Board is a book in conversation with itself about a culture at war with itself. A sharp, funny, and unexpectedly moving take on contemporary America in the digital age." ?David Shields, author of Reality Hunger and How Literature Saved My Life  
 
"A must-read?exhilarating, hypnotic, hilarious, and fun." ?Jeff Ragsdale, author of Jeff, One Lonely Guy  
 
"Fascinating, funny, full of enthusiasm and great loneliness?a portrait of the web in its own words." ?Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day  
 
"Sweet." ?Megan Boyle, author of selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee