The Haiku Review

Laughter as a shield,
coughing through absurdity—
grief wears a loud grin.

Josh Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis is a chaotic, irreverent, and unexpectedly tender dive into the anxieties of modern life, viewed through a lens of absurdist humor and sharp cultural critique. The title sets the tone: dark, dramatic, and a little ridiculous—all of which perfectly reflects the book’s energy. What seems like a bizarre punchline reveals itself to be a clever frame for deeper truths about the body, identity, and how we process fear in a world that never seems to stop spinning.

At its heart, the book’s main theme is about the collision between personal vulnerability and public absurdity. Green threads together reflections on illness—real and imagined—with broader commentary on mental health, societal expectations, and the human impulse to find meaning in chaos. The narrative zips through medical paranoia, existential dread, and self-aware spirals, but beneath the frenetic pace is a genuine exploration of what it means to live in a body you don’t always trust, in a society that often offers more noise than answers. Green’s use of tuberculosis—both metaphor and recurring character—is a stand-in for the ways we overthink, catastrophize, and still try to function. Through illness, he finds clarity; through comedy, he makes peace with discomfort.

Green’s vision for the book seems deliberately fractured—like a mind trying to work through too many thoughts at once, but doing so with purpose. The execution is bold and unapologetically weird. He embraces tangents, builds scenes out of spiraling thoughts, and plays with structure in a way that might frustrate traditional readers but will delight those open to literary experimentation. The tone oscillates between laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly poignant, often within the span of a few paragraphs. There’s a consistent voice underneath the madness—self-deprecating but emotionally precise, witty yet vulnerable. Green is not trying to comfort the reader; he’s inviting them to sit with the mess and maybe laugh at it, just a little.

Everything is Tuberculosis isn’t for everyone—but for the right reader, it hits like a jolt of caffeine and clarity. Fans of David Foster Wallace, Jenny Slate’s memoiristic monologues, or anyone who finds humor in spiraling thoughts and existential over-analysis will find a kindred spirit here. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t belong on a vacation beach chair but makes perfect sense on a couch at 11 p.m., when your thoughts are racing and the world feels a little sideways. It rewards readers who appreciate prose that plays fast and loose with form, but still delivers emotional truth. For those willing to follow Green down the rabbit hole, Everything is Tuberculosis offers something rare: comedy that doesn’t avoid the darkness but dances with it, coughing all the way.