The Last Hiccup - The First Rave

Before I begin a post of unabashed enthusiasm on Christopher Meades' weirdly wonderful new novel The Last Hiccup, a note of caution:

Through careful research and self-imposed paranoid fear-mongering, I have determined that Chris, having never met him physically, is undoubtedly one of the following:

• my doppelganger;
• my long-lost twin, the one I thought I devoured in utero;
• a pod person bent on destroying me.

Why this belief, Corey, oh master of hyperbole? Take a look, and you tell me I'm freaking out over nothing:

All together now;

Meet Corey, who's done most everything,

From practice law to plane jumping.

But Chris has only stayed the course,

He's never even seen a horse.

What a crazy pair!

'Cuz they're authors,

Identical authors and you'll find,

They dress alike, they walk alike,

At times they even write alike:

You can lose your mind,

When authors are two of a kind.

Spooky, no? Maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm afraid to go to sleep at night. Should we meet I have no doubt the universe will cease to exist, or at least suffer a splitting headache.

On the plus side, should I ever die, we have a spare.

But I come here to praise Chris, not to fear him. I was a fan of his debut novel The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark, an unceasingly silly chase novel that gave me no end of pleasure. So when approached, I gladly agreed to blurb his novel (a professional first!), for his sophomore effort The Last Hiccup is everything I look for in a novel; funny, weird, vaguely historical, barely linear, ambiguous, and saturated with synchronous diaphragmatic flutter. Having suffered from a lengthy bout of the devil's esophageal convulsions myself (seven days, no fooling), perhaps I'm inclined to sympathize with Vladimir, the young Russian boy who starts hiccuping at age eight and continues to do so for decades.

If the novel were simply that, twenty-plus years of hiccuping, I think I'd have tired of it. Meades, however, takes the Kurt Vonnegut route of torturing the protagonist, placing his hero in early 20th century Russia and submitting him to horrendous ordeal after horrendous ordeal. In short order, Vladimir, a strangely self-possessed little boy, is abandoned by his mother, experimented on by a mad doctor, and sent to live in the mountains with a strange and silent monk. And I haven't even begun to factor World War I into Meades' melange.

I do love a story that never takes me where I expect, and Hiccup certainly fills that bill. It's also extremely clever, dark, surreal, and unexpectedly poignant. I certainly hope Chris continues to push himself into the unexpected, for I sense there are fathoms of fantastic weirdness in him just aching to be discovered.


[NOTE] Should there ever be interest in mine and Chris' life story, perhaps as a Patty Duke-like family comedy with hijinks galore, I hereby submit the following unknown Canadian actor for consideration:

'Cuz they're triplets!

Identical triplets, and you'll find,

They act alike, they brood alike,

Sometimes they're even subdued alike...

Monkey droppings - Verbatim by Jeff Bursey

The monkey craves political comedy.

But The Daily Show is on too late, The Colbert Report on even later, The Rick Mercer Report is not as clever as it thinks, and This Hour has 22 Minutes ain't nowhere near what it used to be.

And in a world where Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are political icons, isn't satire dead already?

Verbatim (Enfield & Wizenty, 2010)
by Jeff Bursey

We are not here to make politicians sound like tramps or the average person. We are here to uphold the stability of decorum and the dignity of the house, which comes from the Mother Parliament in England, and is an institution worth preserving, not one to be torn apart. The road we are on is wrong! It leads to a mockery of an institution and degrades the Members.

In a former life, I attended law school for three terrifyingly long/remarkably speedy years. During my tenure as student, I had opportunity to peruse the many legal resources available to Canadians. Dominion Law Reports. The Canadian Abridgement. Black's Law Dictionary. And of course, Hansard, the written accounts of parliamentary debates. And once I looked in, I never wanted to return.

Reading Hansard is a slog (although recent electronic advancements have made it slightly easier to search). I did whatever I could to never need visit its pages. It is an invaluable resource; it is also dreadfully dull. Just my opinion, is all. I pity the person whose job it is to transcribe and edit the speeches, complaints, grandstanding, and just general mental meanderings of these woefully verbose Canadian politicians.

In other words, I pity Jeff Bursey.

Bursey has, going by his official biography, worked for Hansard for seventeen years, as transcriber and editor. It only seems fitting that his debut novel Verbatim have Hansard as its subject. Write what you know, you know? However, if Verbatim proves anything, it's that prolonged exposure to Hansard permanently skews the way you see the world. I mean, what if this is all Bursey can write? The poor man must suffer so, his life doomed to reinterpreting every thought through his editorial prowess.

That's a joke (I'm sure Bursey is inherently sane and pleasant), but not a huge one. Verbatim, written mainly in the form of actual Hansard transcripts, is a political satire so dead-on in tone and presentation it's almost indistinguishable from the real thing. I am sure whole segments of Bursey's imaginings could be dropped into actual Hansard pages with little to no disruption. It is a bold choice, and a commendable achievement, but it's also a flaw, as I'll explain.

Verbatim, set in an unnamed Canadian province sometime in the 1990s, is presented on the pages as actual transcriptions of parliamentary sessions (click here for an actual Hansard example: the presentation is exact in every detail). In this province, the Alliance Party and the Social Progressive battle for supremacy, each member giving lip service to their constituents, each primarily concerned with attacking the other's policies and credibility. Interspersed between sessions are letters between the new Director of Hansard, his staff, and the Clerk of the Court, outlining the day-to-day developments in renovating Hansard editorial policies to more accurately represent the speech and content of parliamentary members. In other words, to make them sound like sensible, rational people, not the easiest task in the world. And as the new Hansard policies are implemented, it becomes more and more obvious that the province is run by, for lack of a better word, sub-literates. And we, correspondingly, are implicitly to blame.

Bursey's reproduction of speech patterns and over-the-top hyperbole of Canadian parliament filtered through the arcane editorial processes of Hansard is note-perfect (I particularly love that, as in real life Hansard transcripts, bits of random hubbub by members are reported as "Some Hon. Members: Oh! Oh!" and "Some Hon. Members: Resign! Resign!"). As the members of each party repeatedly attack and mock the other, the statements prove that Parliament is, like most institutions, hardly a step above an elementary school in pettiness, vindictiveness, wilful blindness, purposeful obtuseness, and one-upmanship. As Bursey writes it, there are big, important issues out there, but when Parliament is in session, he who shouts the loudest and longest wins. This is hardly a new idea, but Bursey's inventiveness and integrity to the style and cause of his satire breathes new life into a stale theme. The epigraph by Wyndham Lewis is instructive: "Should we describe it as Satire (merely because it does not refine the truth?) or should we call it realism?" Bursey's satire is well-nigh indistinguishable from the real thing.

Indeed, Verbatim is such intensively perfect rendition of Hansard that it inadvertently falls prey to my own issue with Hansard; it can be frustratingly hard to read. This is not satire that may be read as a novel, in its more usual storytelling form. There are no characters, and members are interchangeable. This is as it should be, of course, showing us that good intentions and integrity mean nothing when the game of politics is at play. Yet I cannot deny that, as the book goes on and the attacks become louder and louder until the clamour of idiocy can almost be heard through the ink on the page, the satire becomes wearisome.

Verbatim is a book is easier to admire than it is to enjoy; just in the writing of this, I've realized that my appreciation of Bursey's accomplishment is far deeper than I first suspected. Bursey stuck to his guns on its form and narrative style, and should be applauded for the result (and it was not an easy book to get to press: click here for a story concerning one of its past publishing upheavals). His presentation is perfect, the comedy subtle yet deep (with a few broad jibes thrown in). Verbatim is not an easy book to digest, and I fear its challenging nature will turn off potential readers; it is, however, damned fine at points, and overall deeply worthwhile.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Monkey droppings - The Warhol Gang by Peter Darbyshire - "My mind is full of other people's mottos."

The Monkey ponders the irony of writing about anti-consumer literature on a Mac.

Life is too short for such imponderables.


The Warhol Gang
by Peter Darbyshire (2010)

I wander the mall to distract myself from whatever's wrong with me. The mall's tunnels go everywhere in the city - under the streets, up through walkways connecting office towers, into bus-station lobbies and hospital cafeterias. I don't think the mall has a beginning or an end. The mall is a part of everything or maybe everything is a part of the mall. Whatever I need is in the mall. Food courts. Clothing stores. Cinemas. I never have to leave the mall.

I don't believe Peter Darbyshire to be the greatest fan of consumerism. Not at all.

Neither is Chuck Palahniuk, at least in Fight Club (a novel that, like it or not, The Warhol Gang is inevitably going to be compared to). But as fresh and unusual as Fight Club was (and still is, I firmly believe it holds up), Palahniuk's other works have slowly but inexorably drifted into self-parody, most evident in the lazy, trite, wafer-thin, oh-so-irredeemably-bloody-awful Tell-All. Seriously, I loves me my Chuck, but he needs to take some time off to re-evaluate.

Where was I? Right, Darbyshire. Like Palahniuk (along with all great satirists such as Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard), Darbyshire is frustrated with certain aspects of society, and feels the need to point out the pointlessness of our foibles. Unlike Palahniuk, however (excepting, of course, if he takes a breather and recovers his senses), Darbyshire isn't running on empty. The Warhol Gang is a vivid, bizarre, fresh, sometimes excruciatingly incisive absurdist novel that not only marks a logical progression in satire (Swift-to-Vonnugut-to-Palahniuk-to-Darbyshire?), but should serve as a rallying point for a new generation of young fans crying out for a satire to call their own.

Darbyshire's hero is Trotsky - not that Trotsky, but rather the moniker given to an aimless young man who has wandered into a job with Adsenses, a "neuromarketing company" that blueprints/brainwashes the minds of its employees in as frightening a manner as anything since A Clockwork Orange. Each employee is provided their own code name (Reagan, Thatcher, Nader, etc.) to "remove as much of [their lives] from the process as possible."

Trotsky's life is nothing but an endless parade of consumer goods, billboards, and inexpressible greed, set in an identifiable dystopia where image and actuality share a shaky truce. His job is to sit in a pod for hours on end while images of consumer products are flashed before his eyes; his brainwave response patterns are then studied:

The walls are lined with monitors. Each one shows an image of a different brain, with glowing numbers floating in the brains.

"We study everything," Nickel tells me. "We watch your heart rate, your breathing, how much you sweat. If you get an erection, we measure it." He takes me over to one of the brains. It's mostly dark, with little spots of light that flare up here and there and then fade away. The patterns of light look random.

"Is that me?" I ask.

"This is you," Nickel says, tapping the dark parts of the brain. He points to a yellow spot that glows briefly on one side of the brain. "This is you thinking about the product."

"That's good, right?" I ask.

"It's good, but its not optimal," Nickel says.

"What would be optimal," I ask.

Nickel watches another flare. "Optimal would be if that was your entire brain," he says.

Trotsky is a natural at the job, a man seemingly destined for such a life, being an almost perfect indiscriminate consumer. His overarching memory of childhood is being lost and abandoned in a mall. The mall was and is at the very centre of his being.

But very quickly, Trotsky discovers the side-effects of his job; hallucinations of the products he sees and the people he imagines using them. His manager advise him that "some people can keep it in check by buying real products." Already unhinged with a lack of actual identity, Trotsky begins living a new life through his products, finding in them a path back to reality, but after the hallucinations return, he then graduates to the next level of reality and begins looking for accident scenes to watch people die.

And then, it gets strange. Trotsky takes up with a woman named Holiday, the "Marilyn Monroe of security videos," obsessed with becoming a star through news reports and snippets of tragedies and cellphone videos broadcast on the television program Panoptical. He discovers a secret society of nihilists living beneath the mall in another mall (A subspace mall? An old Indian burial mall?) that sets itself up as a resistance, but to what is never made clear. And when Trotsky and Holiday become 'reality' stars from an inadvertent snuff film (Trotsky clad in an Andy Warhol mask), he become the de facto face of the uprising (shades of Palahniuk's space monkeys).

Part of the great frustration (and the appeal) of The Warhol Gang is that a description of the plot is practically impossible with, well, giving the entirety of the plot away. Darbyshire twists and warps reality to suit his own needs, and as Trotsky descends into a new level of madness that may or may not be real, not a page goes by without the addition of another puzzle piece to his scattered psyche. The miracle is that none of this feels forced; considering its manic narrative structure, Darbyshire keeps a firm hand on his tale, with nary a scene wasted.

As much as The Warhol Gang is anti-consumerism, it does not come across as a screed to the ignorant masses; indeed, it condemns the ignorant masses as well. When Trotsky admits confusion as to the ultimate cause the Warhol Gang is fighting for, Holiday comments "The Warhol Gang is its own cause." I'm sure I'm not the only reader who'll flashback to the numerous clashes between protesters and police at various G20 summits across the globe upon reading those words (specifically the ones the media focus on), where the point of protest appears to be anarchy for its own sake. We feel the urge to resist, but without a plan, without an visible enemy, all we can create is chaos.

The Warhol Gang is well aware of its forebearers; echoes of Ballard and Orwell and Palahniuk ring throughout, as well as (I'm sure) many others I am unfamiliar with. Such echoes are inevitable. But the story, the style, the whole of the sum of the parts; that's Darbyshire. And it is a gloriously uncomfortable, trippy trek into a world two seconds away from ours.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Monkey droppings - Solar by Ian McEwan

The monkey confronts the concept of aging.

The monkey gets depressed.

The monkey confronts the concept of a grilled cheese sandwich instead.


Solar
by Ian McEwan (2010)

He belonged to that class of men - vaguely unprepossessing, often bald, short, fat, clever - who were unaccountably attractive to certain beautiful women. Or so he believed he was, and thinking seemed to make it so.And it helped that some women believed he was a genius in need of rescue.

Michael Beard is in need of rescue, but not in the way he thinks. Michael needs rescue from his own shortcomings, and quickly; the world is hurtling toward the abyss, after all.

From the reading of the jacket copy, it would appear that Solar, Ian McEwan's newest, is a comedy about the end days, where one man may hold the key to humankind's survival, but only if his redemption is forthcoming. A Terry Pratchettesque comic romp through the apocalypse, as it were.

This being a McEwan novel, however, things are rarely as they appear. The author may indeed wield a narrative device ripe with comic intent - and, truly, he succeeds in some wonderfully absurd set pieces - but Solar is in actuality a paean to aging, and a novel as pungent and blissfully thick of wit as the best of John Updike and Saul Bellow.

Michael Beard is a smart man, no question. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist for his ground-breaking Beard-Einstein Conflation, Beard, now in his fifties, has been summarily side-tracked (rather unwillingly) by the scientific demands of climate change, a study in which he has little interest or patience. Finding himself surrounded by vigorous young scientists, Beard is very much unhappy:

After outlining what he expected to read next year in the third IPCC report, Aldous told Beard - and was the fiftieth person to do so in the past twelve months - that the last ten years of the twentieth century had been the warmest ten, or was it nine, on record. Then he was musing on climate sensitivity, the temperature rise associated with a doubling of CO2 above pre-industrial levels. As they entered London proper, it was radiative forcing, and after that the familiar litany of shrinking glaciers, encroaching deserts dissolving coral reefs, disappearing this and that, on and on, while Beard sank into a gloom of inattention, not because the planet was in peril - that moronic word again -but because someone was telling him it was with such enthusiasm. This is what he disliked about political people - injustice and calamity animated them, it was their milk, their lifeblood, it pleasured them.

Worse yet, Michael's wife Patrice is cheating on him. Despite the decades of indiscretions he has had throughout four previous marriages, this table-turning leaves Michael, "not yet a refugee from the near-silent endgame of his fifth marriage," decidedly lopsided of emotion. A trip to the Arctic with a boatload of flaky artists, followed by a surreptitious accident, appear to place Beard on more solid ground, but even so, the book's only one-third over. Starting in the year 2000, and then jumping ahead to 2005 and 2009, Solar evocatively captures the steady erosion of a man to the various elements of age, society, lust, and food, even as his career threatens to bring him to prominence yet again.

Solar finds McEwan neatly interplaying the precise, befuddling world of the abstract physicist - "Quantum mechanics. What a repository, a dump, of human aspiration it was, the borderland where mathematical rigour defeated common sense, and reason and fantasy irrationally merged." - with the world of the aging Lothario, as insane and irrational a world as has ever been discovered. The qualities that make Beard a genius at his work- the irrational leaps of logic, the ability to conceive the inconceivable - are the very same qualities that make him an utter failure as a human being. Beard can make sense of the most abstract qualities of light, yet cannot possibly be bothered to figure out the reasoning behind his latest tryst. Beard is a man "self-sufficient, self-absorbed, his mind a cluster of appetites and dreamy thoughts," and McEwan takes great delight in throwing whatever possible in Beard's path to throw off his equilibrium.

Despite the intensely comedic nature of Solar's construction (has anyone ever so lovingly crafted an ode to the common potato chip?), there is an indefinable but definite core of sadness at its core, the theory that, despite moments of unadulterated genius, man is as little able to control his base impulses as he is the natural world. How can we be expected to halt imminent catastrophe when even the best and brightest of us cannot comprehend nor control the simplest of impulses that drive ourselves?

I don't believe that Solar is perfect; I found my attention wandering from time to time, as Beard's inner meanderings can be somewhat exhausting. But the writing is gloriously smart (as per usual for McEwan), and Michael Beard is a magnificently flawed creation, an amalgamation of the best and worst of man's capabilities.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Monkey droppings - Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk

The Monkey sits down to read a spanking new novel by an old favourite.

One hundred seventy-plus pages later, the Monkey finishes the novel and is crushed by overwhelming despair.

Tell-All
by Chuck Palahniuk (2010)

NOTE: Before the actual review begins, I'd like to take a moment and discuss something I've been struggling with for some days. As you'll read, I well and truly (spoiler alert!) loathe this novel. But I admit to internal conflict in this. How is Tell-All, to my mind, as poor a novel as The Murder of King Tut or Left Behind or The Justice Riders; novels that can't even summon up the gumption to be interesting. Palahniuk is undeniably a better author than the people behind those masses of tripe, a far more talented craftsman with a unique voice and (usually) singular energy. Yet Tell-All reeks of tedium. I read it, and I cannot find a reason for it to exist. If it weren't for the force of Palahniuk's name, I find it impossible to believe that it would ever have been published. Is it the unproven cynicism behind the novel that goads me, the thrusting of any of Palahniuk's half-baked ideas into the marketplace with the assumption that his fans will lap up anything? That is something I well and truly believe James Patterson does on a daily basis, but I never before would have lumped Chuck in the same pile. As I said, conflict roils in my belly, and I feel sick. Nevertheless, I have to stand by my criticism; Tell-All is execrable.

And now, preamble over, let's get to the review...

A respected author with his best days behind him is a sad, depressing prospect. And with his eleventh novel, American author Chuck Palahniuk has become very sad indeed. Palahniuk used to be a satirical darling with both critics and audiences. His novel Fight Club is a deservedly praised debut of verve and strength, and subsequent novels such as Rant and Choke justly earned him comparisons to J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut.

Lately, however, the quality of Palahniuk’s writings has been slipping. Snuff, about a porn actress trying to beat a sexual record, was a divisive piece of work, and his last novel Pygmy, about a pint-sized terrorist infiltrating an American family, found Palahniuk misfiring on many cylinders.

Yet even with the heartily disappointing Pygmy, Palahniuk was still an author trying out some new moves. But with Tell-All, his fourth novel in as many years, Palahniuk simply gives up, delivering a novel as negligible in size as it is in ambition.

Setting as his centerpiece the antics of a fading oft-married movie star a la Elizabeth Taylor combined with Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, Tell-All is an excursion into the classic Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s. Written in a style akin to gossip tabloids of the time (complete with boldface font for every name mentioned), the novel promises on its surface to be a devastating dissection of celebrity, classic Palahniuk fare.

Palahniuk’s star is the once-famous Katherine Kenton, an actress now “earning applause, not for any performance, but for simply not dying.” The roles have dried up for Ms. Kenton, the only script on her night table “a horror flick about an aged voodoo priestess creating an army of zombies to take over the world.”

Tell-All is narrated by Kenton’s servant Hazie, who tends to “the endless job of dusting and polishing the not insignificant number of bibelots and gold-plated gimcracks awarded to Miss Katie.” Hazie also guards Kenton from possible suitors with ulterior motives, such as the celebrity biographer Webster Carlton Westward III, “the literary equivalent of a magpie, stealing the brightest and darkest moments from every celebrity he’ll meet.”

It’s hardly a unique setting, but the curse of celebrity has always provided a rich vein for satire. There are mild hints through the pages at what Tell-All could have been, an exposé of starwatchers who crave depictions of the sordid lives of celebrities, seeking “comfort and license in their own tawdry, disordered lives.”

Yet while even lesser efforts such as Invisible Monsters saw Palahniuk still pushing at his limits, Tell-All is the effort of an author who has utterly given up. It is a soggy, misshapen mess of half-baked parody and puddle-shallow inspiration.

Not one narrative element is even remotely interesting in presentation. Calling its characters superficial caricatures is a vast understatement, and not once throughout the thankfully meager length does Palahniuk ever achieve anything approaching actual insight. This would not be fatal if the story was at least somewhat captivating, but his paltry attempts at plot are, in keeping with Tell-All’s overall production, laughably insignificant.

Tell-All is an insulting shrug of indifference from an author who once actually mattered on the literary scene. To misquote Norma Desmond, Chuck may still be big, but his novels have gotten small.

VERDICT: MONKEY FLAT-OUT HATES

Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, May 22, 2010.

Girl Crazy by Russell Smith - Quill & Quire review

The estimable mag Quill & Quire had published my review of Russell Smith's newest novel Girl Crazy online. I'd never read Smith before this, but Girl Crazy is strong enough that I'm going to seek out his earlier work.

Here's a nugget:

Smith excels at presenting the sexual fixations of the male psyche, slicing them apart and exposing the emotional impotence beneath. Justin, still an adolescent at heart, fetishizes each woman who crosses his path, living for “the fright of helplessness that he felt when he felt himself staring so hard at a woman who was not staring back: the feeling of seeping power … that you were the wailing infant, waiting for her to feed you.”

If you're intrigued (or bored, who am I to assume your interest level), the rest of the review can be found here.

Monkey droppings - And Another Thing... by Eion Colfer: "Get your towel, Arthur. We have to leave."

The monkey uses his mind to fold space in upon itself, and travels the space-time continuum in search of a new entry in a classic series long thought dead. Will it be a new awakening of classic pleasures, as enjoyable as Joe Gores recently revival of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in Spade and Archer? Or will it fester like the innumerable entries in the 'sequel to Pride & Prejudice or anything by Jane Austen' sweepstakes?

Let's find out.

And Another Thing...
by Eoin Colfer

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing…" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I'll just start this little review with an aside: How could I possibly hate a novel that has the following conversation:

A huge anthropoid was seated uncomfortably in the interview room's office chair, its grotesque, scaled torso squirming in the confines of the small seat. tentacles dripped from its chin like fleeing slugs and hard black eyes glittered from the depths of its pulpy face.

Hillman Hunter shuffled the pages of the creature's résumé.

'So, Mr Cthulhu, is it?'

'Hmmm,' said the creature.

'Good,' said Hillman. 'A bit of the ineffable, I like that in a deity.' He winked conspiratorially. 'Still, it wouldn't be much of an in-depth interview if we couldn't get a few facts out of you, eh, Mr Cthulhu?'

Cthulhu shrugged and dreamed of days of wanton genocide.

How could I ever dislike a novel with the temerity to subject the Great Old One Cthulhu to a job interview to ascertain his possible suitability as a deity for a new colony of Earthlings? Hillman had high hopes for a more ethereal interview process, "engaging in philosophical conversations on the nature of happiness, or being wowed by awesome displays of godly power. Instead he had been forced to grind his way through a sludge of padded résumés in which demi-gods tried to make themselves sound a lot more significant than they actually were." As it turns out, Cthulhu is not at all what Hillman has in mind, being only a 'demi-god' and therefore not technically an immortal being. "It's more or less the same thing," Cthulhu protests. "I do all the same things: apparitions, impregnating, you name it. I have cards for the lounges in Asgard and Olympus. Gold cards." But as Hillman insists, "the advertisement did specify grade-A god."

Part of the genius of Douglas Adams was his ability (likely learned from the British masters of comedy Monty Python) to always make even the most fantastic of circumstances appear mundane through a morass of well-meaning bureaucracy. In Adams' worlds, the most awe-inspiring sunset could only be fully appreciated if the correct paperwork had been filed beforehand in triplicate.

Ever since Adams passed away in 2001—and in another aside, what does it say about me that the celebrity deaths that have affected me the most are invariably comedy related? Adams, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Candy, John Ritter, Phil Hartman (I will never get over Phil Hartman)—ever since, there has been a dearth of his uniquely weird brand of comedic literature. Yes, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin are cut from the same cloth, but Adams was an originator. His seminal work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (hereafter referred to as HG2G) is a masterwork of offbeat plotting and witty writing, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is, to my mind, even better.

But even Adams admitted that his later sequels to HG2G were lacking. The first two were of the same calibre, more or less, but the last two (particularly Mostly Harmless) showed us an artist running a little dry. They had their moments, but they can't be considered as worthy of 'classic' status.

So a new sequel to HG2G should be dismissed out of hand as a bad idea. But there is still the idea that one should not tamper with another's work. Let's be honest, no one wants to see the glory of Adams' legacy reduced to something on the scale of the still-ongoing literary tawdriness of V.C. Andrews, whose fairly ridiculous writings have continued for over two decades since her death.

So now, on the thirtieth anniversary of HG2G's initial publication, a new sequel has been released. Unfortunately, it was not written by Rankin, who I still feel was the best man for the job. But Irish writer Eion Colfer (who mainly writes fiction of the child/young adult variety) has pretty much pulled it off, creating a novel that honours Adams' sensibilities, yet doesn't come across as forced. Make no mistake, Colfer's sequel And Another Thing... is not up to Adams' best, but considering how wrong it could have gone, it is a fine accomplishment, and certainly better than Adams' last two sequels.

And Another Thing... takes up the plot immediately at the end point of Mostly Harmless, wherein Arthur Dent, Trillian, their daughter Random Dent, and Ford Prefect are about to be destroyed along with the Earth, or a plural reality version thereof. I'll stop here to note that a knowledge of the previous five books is essential to comprehension of And Another Thing...; I have read a few blogosphere comments complaining about this, but allow me to make the bold statement that no novel of Adams' HG2G trilogy-plus-two makes any sort of sense without full knowledge of the previous entries. If you're not up to that task, best walk away now.

After the quartet (spoiler alert!) survive the attack, they find themselves once again hooking up with Zaphod Beeblebrox (highly improbably, but if you know the series, imminently foreseeable), ex-president of the Galaxy and all-round froody guy, as well as with returning bit player (from Life, the Universe, and Everything) Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Together, in a plot that manages to weave in the mythical god Thor, a bizarre cult "who firmly believed in divination through the medium of semi-congealed cheese," and feral physical therapists, the group must defeat the Vogons from wiping out the last vestiges of humanity (currently living on a planet designed after the John Wayne movie The Quiet Man).

Quite obviously, Colfer has taken Adams' penchant for throwing everything into the mix to see what sticks to heart. The pages of And Another Thing... are teeming with the absurd asides that were the hallmark of HG2G's style, such as a quick explanation of the belief system of Folfangan slugs, "who judge a number's worth based on the artistic integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket receipts are beauteous ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week." Admittedly, such tangents can get tiresome, and Colfer arguably uses a few too many funny words and silly noises, but Adams was hardly above a bad pun or two himself.

Not a lot of Colfer's plot makes any sort of linear sense, but the series has always had a great deal of fun playing with notions of time and space anyway. And it's rather wonderful to be with old friends again, especially the terminally unlucky Arthur, pining for his lost love Fenchurch; as Random succinctly puts it, "I'm sure you'll bring doom down on us all presently. It's your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah." I also enjoyed Colfer's attempts to better humanize Trillian, a character Adams never fully explored and who came across initially as flighty and later as just plain unlikeable. Ford gets slighted, but there's more than enough Zaphod to make up for it. I would have liked a return of Marvin the paranoid android (surely there must have been a way), but as his ultimate exit in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was Adams as his most touching, I can live with it (If you must spoil it for yourself, visit the Marvin Wikipedia page). If there's a real fault with Colfer's attempt, it's in his trying to cram too much in; there's too many nods to past novels, too many inside references, too many bloody characters doing too much at once.

But the HG2G series has always had a shaggy dog aspect to it, an unkempt attitude; the novels sometimes behaved like ADD sufferers on a Red Bull binge. Colfer does his best, but And Another Thing... occasionally substitutes speed of delivery for wit, and quite often is plain too goofy even for a Douglas Adams piece.

But I'm okay with that. Colfer has crafted a strong companion piece to Adams' HG2G series that continues the mythos with the same anarchic glee and intelligence. If he must continue it further (and there is always more story out there), I look forward to the ride.

VERDICT: MONKEY THINKS IT'S ALL RATHER FROODY

Monkey Droppings - Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

I'm going to put a few quick book reviews up in the next few days, to make up for an appalling break on my part. They'll be quick, and hardly insightful, but I do hope you'll read the books anyway, and forgive my lackadaisical nature.

Also, I'm starting a new ratings system. I'm sick of As, Bs, Cs, etc. You'll find the new handy-dandy rating at the bottom of each review.

And now, to work! If twenty minutes of ill-conceived ramblings can be considered work. It can? Score!

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
by Brock Clarke

Sam Pulsifer has a problem, or rather, many problems. He was convicted of arson and inadvertent murder after a youthful escapade ended in the fiery destruction of Emily Dickinson's house, and the deaths of the two caretakers inside. Years later, after serving his sentence, Sam appears to have his life back on track; he has a wife, lovely kids, a degree in packaging science, and no contact with his parents or anything from his previous life. Until the son of the dead caretakers shows up for an apology, and the homes of other famous authors are mysteriously torched.

From such beginnings grows a novel of insanity and revenge that almost effortlessly achieves a strange and alluring grandeur. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a gratifyingly accomplished novel that puts author Brock Clarke on my watch list.

What makes Guide such a marvelous comedy, aside from Clarke's clear prose and sparking wit, is his treatment of his lead character. In the best tradition of classic comedic heroes, Sam is not so much an actor as a reactor, always one step behind and guided by forces beyond his control. There is quite a bit of the hapless Sam Lowry in Pulsifer, the befuddled hero of Terry Gilliam's satire Brazil. Pulsifer, like Lowry, is an immediately identifiable 'bumbler' (in the parlance of his father), trying to wend his way through life without causing ruckus or discord, yet constantly forced to act against his will. As he slowly tracks down the real arsonist - aided by letters written to him while in prison, pleading for him to burn down other the homes of other authors such as Mark Twain or Robert Frost - Pulsifer examines the effect stories have on people, and how people are desperate to have stories of their own.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a major accomplishment in comic misadventure, a softly endearing dissection of the love of good stories, and a treat of a novel.

MONKEY LIKES A LOT

Monkey Droppings - Angry butterflies and raging toys; The Voice of the Butterfly & Amberville

Two novels today, one old, one new, each strange and bizarre, and both worthy of your consideration.




The Voice of the Butterfly (2001) by John Nichols

“We have become inured to the tragic consequences of human personality on a rampage, and our disinterest is casually destroying The Meaning of Life on Earth.”

John Nichols has sadly faded from public view as of late. While his New Mexico trilogy (including most famously The Milagro Beanfield War) is a justly-celebrated series on the ongoing rape of the land and the effects of said rape on its inhabitants, Nichols has kept a lower profile for the past decade or so, slowing his output, releasing a few novels to some acclaim but less impact. This is a horrible error that must be corrected.

The Voice of the Butterfly shows that Nichols has not lost his taste for satire nor his anger at the continuing destruction of the Earth. While the New Mexico trilogy had flights of craziness, Butterfly finds Nichols in full-on Tom Robbins mode, spewing forth sentences of breathtaking insanity and wordplay. You have to have a love of over-the-top writing to fully appreciate this novel, but if you are thus equipped, you are in for one hell of a treat. A bizarre, hilarious, profane, and tremendously entertaining rant, The Voice of the Butterfly is a raging voice in the wilderness, crying out for common sense and decency over money interests and rampant consumerism.

The butterfly of the title is the Phistic Copper, an obscure little insect whose entire existence as a species is threatened by development prospects. The Butterfly Coalition, led by lefty eco-lover and librarian Charley McFarland and his slipping-into-dementia ex-wife Kelly, is frantically trying to get the word out. The developers, a slimy bag of reprobates you should be lucky to never meet in reality, will do everything and anything to push the project through.

This is not exactly a subtle satire, and nor is it unbiased. Far be it from me to equate a character’s beliefs with that of its author (a charge often leveled against me for arguably good reasons), but when Charley opines, “If the radical right had its way we’d all be church-going polyester heterosexuals driving around in white Cadillacs eating meatloaf and wax beans while mammoth bulldozers leveled all our forests and even hummingbirds were extinct,” it’s hard not to feel that Nichols may be wearing his heart on his sleeve. When you combine that with the fantastic names Nichols comes up with for his characters—unwieldy Pynchonesque monikers such as Farragut Wallaby, Edna Poddubny, Charity Gingivitis, and Mookie Dirigible walk through the pages—you get a rollicking socio-political trek through both the worst and the best of America.

Like Robbins, there is just so much overt burlesque wildness one can take, and it can be somewhat tiresome after a while to see the well-meaning but limp liberals crushed under the unthinking monstrosity of Republican ideals again and again. But Nichols unhinged is an astonishing thing, and if you are pure of heart and stout of will, The Voice of the Butterfly is a weird, wonderful ride.

GRADE - B+

Amberville (2009)
by Tim Davys

"Here I stand, hiding, he thought, inside a stall in a men's restroom along with a drug-intoxicated homosexual prostitute gazelle who is particularly popular with the masochists of the city."

How, I ask you, could I not fall a little in love with a novel that has sentences such as that?

I have a true soft spot for the anthropomorphization of animals (animate and inanimate) when it comes to literature. William Kotzwinkle's The Bear Went Over the Mountain is one of my all-time great reads, with bear-turned-novelist Hal Jam a creation of sublime delights. Clifford Chase's Winkie, a dark satire involving a teddy bear accused of terrorist activities, was one of my favourite novels of 2008. Penn Jillette's Sock took the lovable sock monkey to deliriously obscene new heights. Not to mention the Douglas Adams-esque hilarity found within the pages of Robert Rankin's The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, as a teddy bear detective tries to unravel the clues and save his beloved Toy City from a serial killer. And let's not forget that beloved graddaddy of animal satires, George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Tim Davys would initially seem to be taking the same tact as Rankin, creating in his new novel Amberville an entire city of stuffed animals who fear their eventual removal from the city when their names fall on the fabled 'Death List'. But as Davys travels the back alleys of a decidely unfriendly world filled with enough unsavory characters and degenerates to fill several Spillane ominbuses, the Swedish author shows his creation to be nothing less than a pure-blooded film noir mystery thriller sans humour to leaven the situation. These may be stuffed animals, but there is nothing cute about them. As a novel, Amberville is more in line with the dark noir of Gary Wolf's Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (a novel leaner and meaner than the movie adaptation [great though it is] would have you believe).

Eric Bear seems to have it all; a good job, a sexy wife in Emma Rabbit, and a lot to live for in Mollisan City. But his past comes rushing back in the form of Nicholas Dove, an underworld heavy who has discovered that his name is likely on the Death List. Nicholas wants Eric to have his name removed, or Emma is dead. But does the Death List even exist?

Amberville's main flaw is that, despite its trappings, it takes itself utterly too seriously. For a time, it is uncertain why Davys would even bother shoehorning the toys into a decidely classic mystery plotline. But it soon becomes clear that stuffed animals can, by their very nature, possibly unearth answers that more 'realistic' characters never could.

"All stuffed animals have asked themselves questions of life and death at some point, when young or old. Why must the factories manufacture new animals? Why must those who were already living in the city be carried away by the Chauffeurs? Why did they all live in open or concealed terror of what would happen in the next life? And who had established a system so cruel?"

By placing his gritty mystery into the framework of a breathing toy city, Davys is able to explore questions of mortality that a mere human sleuth could never hope to answer. Who are we? Who is our creator? Why do we die? A stuffed animal could hypothetically live forever, but the existence of a Death List calls into question tricky issues on morality and religion that could otherwise never be answered. And Amberville asks some questions that could make certain elements of society cringe with outrage. When Eric's brother Teddy muses, "Religion [was] a two-edged weapon. It was all a matter of daring to believe in the unbelieveable which in all other contexts was described as stupidity," it's hard not to wonder how some people might take such questions.

Which, aside from an assurity of plot and character, is Amberville's major strength. Aside from it's classic mystery underpinnings (done up in an often spectacular fashion), Amberville raises philosophical questions that encourage further thought. Amberville is a classic noir, filled with ambiguity, menace, and deceit. It also has a brain, and isn't afraid to use it in search of meaning.

GRADE - A-

If Watchmen is only half this good...

...consider me there. Reimagining the Watchmen as a family-friendly Scooby-Doo mystery cartoon is beyond perfection.



Seriously, cannot wait for the film.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima - Morrow's latest!

As I've mentioned previously, I harbour great admiration for the satirical works of James Morrow. A self-titled 'scientific humanist', his novels and short stories are astoundingly clever, intensely thought-provoking, and frequently hilarious. I dare you to read Towing Jehovah and not laugh at the sheer absurdity of finding the two-mile long body of God floating in the Atlantic Ocean. What, you're not laughing?

His newest novel, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, promises to be a political satire of the highest order. 

From the bumpf:

It is the early summer of 1945, and war reigns in the Pacific Rim with no end in sight. Back in the States, Hollywood B-movie star Syms Thorley lives in a very different world, starring as the Frankenstein-like Corpuscula and Kha-Ton-Ra, the living mummy. But the U.S. Navy has a new role waiting for Thorley, the role of a lifetime that he could never have imagined.

The top secret Knickerbocker Project is putting the finishing touches on the ultimate biological weapon: a breed of gigantic, fire-breathing, mutant iguanas engineered to stomp and burn cities on the Japanese mainland. The Navy calls upon Thorley to don a rubber suit and become the merciless Gorgantis, and to star in a film that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japanese metropolis. If the demonstration succeeds, the Japanese will surrender and many thousands of lives will be spared; if it fails, the horrible mutant lizards will be unleashed. One thing is certain: Syms Thorley must now give the most terrifyingly convincing performance of his life. Godzilla devotees and history buffs alike will be fascinated by this conspiratorial secret history of a war, a weapon, and a highly unlikely hero.

In the dual traditions of Godzilla as a playful monster and a symbol of the dawn of the nuclear era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima blends the destruction of World War II with the halcyon pleasure of monster movies. You’ve never read anything quite like it.

Friend of the blog Matt Staggs has been doing promotions for various authors (including the late, lamented Thomas Disch, whose last release The Wall of America I will review in these virtual pages sometime soon), but he's lucked into a terrific gig with this one. He's created a sterling advance trailer for Shambling, which I present below in all its tempting glory.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima is due to take over stores in early February 2009.

A quad of reviews -Paul Auster, Sky Gilbert, Brian Evenson, Clifford Chase

Just some quick reviews today, to clear out the pile. But they're all good novels, with one certainly earning a berth on my all-time favourites list.

Man in the Dark
Paul Auster
Henry Holt, 2008

Paul Auster is a novelist known for taking chances. His New York Trilogy is a classic of post-modernist weirdness. The Music of Chance is a sterling character study. The Book of Illusions is a spectacular, romantic ode. Auster is not known for shying away from a challenge. But Man in the Dark is unusual even by those standards.

It all takes place in the space of one night. August Brill is an author recuperating from injuries sustained in a car accident. As he suffers through a sleepless night, he thinks up a story in an alternate timeline, where the twin towers never fell, and the U.S. has been split in a civil war over the Bush-Gore vote debacle. As the night wears on, the plot progresses, only to be abandoned by Brill as his grand-daughter starts up a conversation about the murder of her boyfriend.

Even by Auster standards, the plot of Man in the Dark beggars description. It has little form, and doesn't resolve itself rather than merely end as the sun comes out. But Auster isn't being lazy; he uses the rambling narrative as a device to touch on issues such as war, love, fear, and hope. In one night, Brill covers much of what North Americans habitually stress themselves into knots over. There are no clear-cut answers, and Auster doesn't pretend to have a solution. "The weird world rolls on," one character mutters, and that's as good a summation of Auster's alternately frustrating and magical novel as any.

Grade: B+

Brother Dumb
Sky Gilbert
ECW Press, 2007

Who is Brother Dumb? Many have speculated, but the best guess as to the identity of the famous yet unnamed memoirist Canadian author Sky Gilbert brings to life is J.D. Salinger. He makes mention of his initials, his sporadic output, his past marriages, his forays in religion; I'm no Salinger expert, but the parallels between Brother Dumb and Salinger are stark and unmistakeable. I don't know why Gilbert would choose not to mention Salinger by name, but considering Salinger's penchant for suing people who use his name (see his famous wranglings with W.P. Kinsella over Kinsella's use of Salinger as a character in his novel Shoeless Joe), it's a safe bet that Gilbert did not want the hassle.

Anyway, the novel is not presented as a mystery to be solved: instead, it's a character study of a man who considers himself humble but is anything but; who says he has a love of people but hates everyone he meets; who yearns to be a silent monk ("Brother Dumb") but in reality cannot shut up. Gilbert's author is a crank, a crotchety old man, and it's no mean feat that Gilbert manages to make the coot likable.

Gilbert's pseudo-memoir is a study in loneliness, and an unflinching portrayal of the temperament of the artist. The author never apologizes for who he is, and indeed, cares far more for his fictional creations than his flesh-and-blood acquaintances. There's undeniable pathos in Gilbert's exploration of how far man will go to have his real life emulate his imagination. The author is a lonely, lonely man, and mostly of his own choosing, but if he's insufferable as a person, he's wonderfully entertaining as a character.

Grade: A-

Last Days
Brian Evenson
Underland Press, 2009

This novel hasn't yet been released, but I can't imagine Brian Evenson being annoyed at some pre-publication praise.

Ostensibly a mystery, Last Days concerns the travails of Kline, a police officer who has recently been parted from his hand (and not by choice). After a series of mysterious phone calls, Kline is forcibly convinced by a strange duo to return with them to their compound, as he is the only person capable of solving a crime. What the crime actually is differs from person to person. Oh, and every individual Kline meets is missing at least one body part. And they parted from their appendages most willingly. I don't wish to give too much away, but when you learn from the publisher that Last Days is a lengthening of Evenson's short story "The Brotherhood of Mutilation," you kind of get a hint as to where it might be headed.

The cover copy presents Last Days as a "down-the-rabbit-hole detective mystery," and like Alice in Wonderland, Kline finds that his presumptions concerning morality and freedoms mean nothing in the situation he is in. Correspondingly, the reader is left as ignorant as Kline, and can only hold on. Last Days falls squarely in the genre of 'the condemned man who has not been told the charges', and is a sterling example of paranoid fiction.

What is Last Days about? Is is a condemnation of fanaticism? Certainly, the acts of Kline's abductors are cult-like, but Evenson is more concerned with keeping the reader off-guard with left turns, misdirection, and some gut-churning violence. It goes without saying, I dug it a lot. Evenson's plot is unsettling and eerie, an equal mixture of Franz Kafka and David Lynch. As Kline winds himself deeper and deeper into Evenson's labyrinth (is the book really only 170+ pageslong?), his options for extricating himself become fewer, especially when he finds himself between warring factions. The ultimate ending, a complete abandonment of the self, is severe and uncompromising, somehow reminding me of the bleak despair of the finale of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, as Neville submits to his fate and becomes the monster.

Last Days is gruesome, perplexing, reprehensible, cruel, and freaking marvelous. I'll be tracking down Evenson's other novels ASAP.

Grade: A-

Winkie
Clifford Chase
Grove Atlantic, 2006

When I stopped and thought about it, I was struck not so much by how much Winkie reminded me of the works of William Kotzwinkle, but more by how few authors use Kotzwinkle as a template. Kotzwinkle has been a preeminent satirist for much of his writing career, and many could learn from his unique sensibilities. Yes, it's all well and good to emulate Vonnegut (register him for sainthood, in my opinion), but Kotzwinkle's novels offer delights both sublime and ridiculous. As does Winkie, a charming, shaggy, ultimately heart-rending tale of the yearning for freedom in a society that craves its scapegoats.

Winkie is a teddy bear with a dream: freedom. After decades of entrapment as a immobile object, Winkie takes it upon himself to leap to his feet and take action, running to the woods, living off the land, and somehow giving birth to a daughter, Baby Winkie. However, fate is indeed cruel, as Winkie becomes mistaken for a unabomber-style terrorist and is tried in a kangaroo court so outrageous it makes the Guantanamo trials seem reasonable and well considered.

Winkie is a bizarre little creature, both as cuddly object of childhood adoration and as literary object of my adoration. It's part allegory for the insane times we live in, with our fear of the other and our incessant need to blame others for our problems. It's part exploration of the outsider. But Winkie's true heart lays in Chase's plea for acceptance and tolerance. Winkie may be a bear, but he's far more rational a being than most people, and far more accepting of the world's mysteries. Winkie's journey is a journey every thinking being must take, and it's rather frightening that a teddy bear is more equipped to deal with the world than most functioning adults.

Winkie is, for me, that rarest of novels: a novel I wish I had written. There's magic in it.

Grade: A+