Bindlestiff by Wayne Holloway

2036. In a ramshackle, backwater United States, Marine Corp vet Frank Dubois journeys from L.A. to Detroit, seeking redemption for a life lived off the rails, in a country derailed from its own manifest destiny. 

In present day Hollywood, a wannabe British film director hustles to get his movie ‘Bindlestiff’ off the ground starring ‘Frank’, a black Charlie Chaplin figure cast adrift in post-federal America. 

Weaving together prose and screenplay Bindlestiff explores the power and responsibility of storytelling, revealing what lies behind the voices we read and the characters we see on screen.

We open with a simple image of a man mending a hole in his shoe using a cut off piece of rubber and a tube of glue. From there the story explodes into a broiling satire on race, identity, family, friendship, war, peace, sex, drugs but precious little rock and roll.

Bindlestiff.

"If it’s broke, fix it."

About the author

Wayne Holloway is a writer/director currently working in advertising. He shot his first movie, Snakes and Mongoose in LA in 2013. His second movie The Canal, based on Lee Rourke’s prize winning novel, shoots in London this year. He is the author of short story collection Land of Hunger (Zero, 2015) 

Praise for Wayne Holloway and Bindlestiff

“If the fake schmooze of movie awards makes you retch – but what better fix than this searing satire of the Hollywood Machine. Bindlestiff – another word for hobo – is the story of a Brit director in LA hustling to flog his script about down on his luck itinerant cast adrift in a near-future, gone-to-the-dogs America. Flipping between LA sushi bars and the murderous, lawless Midwestern backwaters of the film’s script, it bristles with a cut-throat comedy.  Great Again, Mr Trump? Mr Holloway did not read the script.”
– The Sun 5 star review

“Wayne Holloway takes a cinematic approach to novel writing… Holloway’s style mixes the drug-fuelled escapades of Hunter S. Thomson with the subversive flair of Colson Whitehead… original and inventive … this is a fresh, riotous, and innovative novel, published by a small press who clearly have an eye for exciting new ventures in contemporary fiction.”
– Buzz

“Holloway’s searing satirical hacksaw cleaves away at the ‘creative’ coal face so many of us struggle up. Utterly and uniquely readable brilliance.”
– Jolyon Rubinstein, The Revolution Will Be Televised (BBC)

“Bindlestiff is a lot of things, all of them essential. It’s a delicious blend of Hollywood send-up, dystopian travelogue and excerpted screenplay – a huge technical achievement. It’s a treasury of high-energy prose – a sentence-by-sentence pleasure. And it’s a comedy cast in a tragic mould, which lets us in on the joke we are, but makes it very funny indeed.”
– Joseph Furey

“Holloway’s latest work is bold, fresh, and an exciting contribution to Influx Press’ enviable repertoire.”
– The London Magazine

“No bullshit, no self-indulgence, no pretence.”
– Pendora

“Influx Press have themselves a book and an author that will truly change and level the playing fields, bringing them toe to toe with the publishing elite. Bindlestiff truly renews ones faith in the power of experimental literature.”
– STORGY

“In adeptly handling such a variety of themes across a number of genres, Holloway has announced himself to be a highly creative and inventive new voice in literature.”
– Morning Star

“Bindlestiff is a book that defies easy categorisation: partly autofiction and deft satire on Hollywood, part unfinished screenplay, part road trip through a near future post-collapse America, this is a beguiling kaleidoscope of a novel – compelling, troubling, provoking – hugely recommended.”
– James Miller, author of Lost Boys and Unamerican Activities

“From the broadways of present-day Hollywood, with its sushi bars and rictus grins, to the ravaged landscape of a near-future American west, Bindlestiff anatomises the American imperialist dream – capturing the moment the snake it eats its own tail. A raucous, red-blooded, white-water ride of a novel.”
– Samuel Fisher, author of The Chameleon

“Wayne Holloway delivers a clenched fist rammed hard into the flabby belly of what post-modern writing has become.”
– Stewart Home

“At long last: A short-story collection packed with meaning. Land of Hunger is a socio-political odyssey that is both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving. Wayne Holloway is a much-needed breath of fresh air.”
– Lee Rourke, on Land of Hunger

Further Reading

Interview with Wayne Holloway
– Civilian Reader

The Momus Questionnaire with Wayne Holloway
– Minor Literature(s)

Paperback ISBN: 9781910312292

Ebook ISBN: 9781910312308

Publication date: January 2019

Formats: Paperback / eBook