Reviewed By Cooper Lee Bombadier – Full Review
“From the first paragraph, multidisciplinary artist and animator Clement Goldberg’s debut novel New Mistakes telegraphs to the reader that they can and should throw out everything they expect from conventional narrative fiction and instead just flow with this weird and wicked ride for the next two-hundred-something pages. Those familiar with Goldberg’s short stop-motion animated films already have their pumps primed for the unexpected, funny, anthropomorphic, psychedelic, and tender turns the book will take. This novel is an exciting continuation of the artist’s exploration of climate crisis and social satire through the twinned apertures of hope and grief.
New Mistakes chronicles the antics of a handful of characters whose fates become intertwined, but not quite for the reasons they expect. The characters try to live through emotional throat punches to their selfhoods, muck through shin-deep relational and professional failures, and strive to get laid despite the lurid banality of their sexual desires, backdropped in the simulacrum called California, an outsize blip of the cultural imaginary existing on a planet set to boil by the death-drive machinations of cynical late-stage capitalist America. The characters try to make art or at least something moderately beautiful, longing to find meaning and connection as they stumble toward purpose.” Full Review Continued
clement goldberg 