Trash Mountain

Ben Shippers doesn’t have much use for school, friends, or pretty much anyone except his smartass siser, but he does harbor a secret passion: Trash Mountain, the central feature of the noxious landfill next to his house, the fumes from which have made his sister ill. After a botched attempt to destroy Trash Mountain with a homemade firebomb, Ben begins a years-long infiltration operation that leads him to drop out of school to work alongside homeless trash-pickers, and then, eventually, intern at the very place he meant to destroy. Ben’s boss there, a charismatic would-be titan of sanitation, shows Ben the intricate moralities of the trash industry, forcing him to choose between monetary stability and his environmental principles. With dark humor, Trash Mountain reflects on life in small southern cities in decline and an adolescent’s search for fundamental values without responsible adults to lead the way.

"The novel has an episodic feel, as Ben encounters an array of fellow students, potential employers, and local luminaries. Throughout, Bazzle chronicles the ways in which Ben’s early idealism erodes under more complex concerns. The novel’s tone is occasionally uneven: Bazzle’s observations on questions of race and class feel rooted in a social realism tradition, while other characters, like a long-winded local businessman and his father, a contentious figure nicknamed “Donkey Dan,” seem imported from a more broadly satirical work. Bazzle’s novel explores the compromises one makes in life even as it blends the gritty and the extravagant along the way."--Kirkus Reviews, “From Mark Twain to George Saunders, Bradley Bazzle's Trash Mountain joins a long tradition of dark humor, wild inventiveness, and social satire in American letters. By turns hilarious, colorful, and strange, this affecting debut novel revels in the absurd but never strays far from the deeply felt humanity of its characters.”—Maceo Montoya, author of The Deportation of Wopper Barraza “In Trash Mountain, ​Bradley Bazzle has created a perfect protagonist in Ben Shippers: peculiar yet endearing, curiouser than a cat, and ready to take on the (trashy) challenges his young life throws at him. The novel is funny and engaging, and Bradley's concise and vivid prose guides us masterfully to its insightful conclusion. What a fine debut!”—Samrat Upadhyay, author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, "Trash Mountain is gripping, with a finely drawn young protagonist, Ben, and a gigantic dump next door to his home. He and his friends call it Trash Mountain, and it is the central character in this book, a multifaceted character that encompasses and compresses all the strands of modern life . . . So, sure, the dump is a veritable mountain of a metaphor for modern life, and even though the whole proposition sounds distasteful, you’ll want to keep on reading and living along with Ben as he tries to figure things out and wreak revenge on the man who owns Bi-Cities and enriches himself by trashing the lives of all who are impacted by Trash Mountain." —Pete McCommons, Flagpole Magazine

Bradley Bazzle’s first novel, Trash Mountain, won the 2016 Red Hen Press Fiction Award, judged by Steve Almond. His short stories have won awards from The Iowa Review, New Ohio Review, and Third Coast. They also appear in New England Review, Epoch, Copper Nickel, Web Conjunctions, and other literary journals. Bradley grew up in Dallas, Texas, and has degrees from Yale, Indiana University, and the University of Georgia, where he taught writing. He remains in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.