Paul G. Maziar and Matt Maust’s new book makes you make sense of it

The ideas and personal revelations about the mundane in What It Is: What It Is won’t make sense if you don’t want them to.

That’s because writer Paul G. Maziar’s and graphic artist/photographer/Cold War Kids bassist Matt Maust’s collaboration feels like an existential ‘zine. The two men seem to have an intentional disregard for what they call “the conventions that structure perceptions,” requiring the reader to bring his or her own coherence and understanding to their arbitrary coupling of beat-inspired vignettes and black-and-white photos.

What It Is reads like a travel journal of people with plenty of time to drink and think about the myriad ways the modern world affects the human condition. The chapter on Long Beach, where both artists have at one time made a home, begins with Maziar proclaiming our sordid little burg “one of the strangest places I have ever experienced.” It’s like flipping through Polaroids of a night stumbling from bar to bar on Fourth Street, with new “friends” finding their way home with you after last call and playing all the wrong records before passing out.

It creates its own narrative, if you can relate to the epiphanies. The pictures, which Maziar says are sometimes matched randomly, don’t fill in any gaps. The only recognizable image related to the city is a loaded freighter at sea. And that disconnect should be expected after a preface that proclaims the themes to include “leisure and the revolt against mechanized living.” It’s their license to be random, and busy thinking about why. It also means there are no answers.

WHAT IT IS: WHAT IT IS BY PAUL G. MAZIAR AND MATT MAUST SOFTCOVER | 136 PGS | WRITE BLOODY PUBLISHING | $15 | WEST COAST BOOK RELEASE READING BY PAUL G. MAZIAR | LIVE MUSIC BY JESSICA DOBSON | {open} | 226 E FOURTH ST LONG BEACH 90814 | 562.499.6736 | THESTORYOFOPEN.COM | SAT 8-10PM

Tags: Books, cold war kids, matt maust, paul g. maziar, what it is: what it is