One of a series of nine carefully commissioned bodies of work, Stewart Home chose One Break, A Thousand Blows! as part of a historical tribute to a previous tendency to choose more difficult, less obvious texts, highlighting the more non-commercialized, avant garde tendencies of the mid-twentieth century’s Beat Generation or the somewhat tedious constraint-based Oulipian dialectics. This novel—like many bubbling up in this millennium—is tainted in a good way, clouded with previous literary influences, wary of outright acceptance by a quaint populace. One Break can be frustrating, for it could be interpreted that Kim does not care whether or not the reader hears the joke or the punch line. A drum roll doesn’t always lead to humor, and humor is sometimes far from appropriate. More »