Lint

"Your mischievous remedies have smashed us all!"

- Alger Lattimore            

           Oh, god, where do I begin? Way back in my first review, I mentioned a conversation I had with my friend Greg. Greg and I had a gym class together about once a day, and in this class, we talked books with each other a lot (as well as other things, but this blog isn't about those, so screw 'em). He got me into Terry Goodkind, I got him into Dune, and so on and so forth. At the time, I had just discovered the "bizarro" literary movement and was making my way through a couple of severely strange books I couldn't get through interlibrary loan. The one title I could get my hands on was Steve Aylett's Lint. For back then, I couldn't believe that a book so audacious could ever make it to print, though I figured it being small press had something to do with that. And within about two or three days of laughing uncontrollably and trying to quote passages to my friends and loved ones, it was love.
           So naturally, I handed my ILL copy to Greg. He finished it by that Friday and we had the conversation I mentioned earlier, where he asked me "How the hell can you recommend this to someone? How can you hand someone a book going 'I know you're going to want to punch me for making me read this, but...'" Still, he liked the book, so it wasn't all bad. And now I finally know how I can possibly recommend it to someone: It's freaking brilliant for what it is. Steve Aylett has crafted in Lint an insane book with an equally-insane title character, an absurdist satire of biographies, cult authors, and indeed most science fiction. If you don't find something even amusing about the book, I am shocked and surprised by this. The book is absurd but never forcibly so, and the quotes I have wrung from it stay with me to this day, in the form of things like the "Great crowd tonight, release the tigers" mantra, the phrase "That's not a scarecrow, it's a crucifix in a hat!", or other choice bits. It's memorable, light, relentlessly funny, and most of all, it's fun.
           Lint is the biography of Jeff (possibly Jack) Lint, a science fiction author who started with the pulps in the 1940s under the pen name "Isaac Asimov". He would continue to inflict his quite nuts and absolutely unpublishable work on the general populace through a series of books, short stories, TV and film scripts, and a failed children's series, all while mingling with the elite and the lowest alike. The book (written, as it says on the cover, by Steve Aylett) follows this luminary from the moment of birth to his eventual death of a cerebral hemorrhage in the mid-90s, giving us an insight into how this tall, gangly whack job captivated the hearts and minds of thousands. But there's something not quite right. Occasionally, the absurdity gives way, showing something darker waiting just outside of the capering, brightly-colored satire. A world of freakish details and possible parallel worlds, where a man "pushed his face so far into the book that it was unable to be removed",  until someone has to cut away most of his face and skull. A world where a children's cartoon that didn't last more than four episodes invaded the minds and dreams of the people who watched it. Where the impressive figure in the book might not be all he appears to be, nor the world he inhabits all that stable.
             First and foremost, I love this book for the sheer balls-out way it commits to its premise. On the back cover, you won't find quotes talking about the fictitious nature of the work, but instead praising Steve Aylett and talking about how they discovered Jeff Lint's work-- most notably from Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock, two acclaimed British authors. Lint is laid out in chapters, an index, and even quotes from Lint's work and interviews, all sourced to books. The tone never once winks at the audience, but lays its absurd premise out in the most serious way it can. If its stated premise was to get us to laugh, we'd be on guard for it every second we spent reading it, but it doesn't, so we're caught off guard by the naturally funny syntax. 
             The syntax, too, is especially funny. While silly, it resembles actual quotes from cult figures. It's merely the frantic mumblings of a Burroughs or a Thompson, or even Philip K. Dick, but taken to their logical extremes. Aylett is exceptionally vivid, but in a fairly restrained way. He's not above going for a vivid and surrealistic scene or six, but keeps it framed within the work-- this is, after all, a biography, not a run-of-the-mill novel. He has to keep some level of seriousness in presentation and tone. This also makes for a nice contrast when Lint utters such phrases as "When the abyss gazes into you, bill it.", or submits his manuscripts in drag. Or when his agent enters a "catatonic insectile state" and spends the rest of the book decomposing.
            Which brings me to the world. Lint purports to set itself in modern day, but a ridiculously bent version, mostly due to the influence of the Lint character. Lint is the center of things, after all, and gives the book a very skewed focal point. He is given friends both historical and real, a pretentious nemesis in the form of literary critic Cameo Herzog (who inadverdently sets the mob on our protagonist), fans, and disciples. It's very clear from the scenes involved and the way everything from decomposing literary agents to taxi-driver suicides (due to Lint's theory of space) is treated as commonplace that this is definitely not our world. Either way, Aylett has the utmost control over his setting, and draws us in quickly by making it seem like it's our own before yanking the rug (and indeed the house) out from under our feet and plunging headlong into the account of a madman writing fiction. 
             And this brings us to that dark side. No, the book isn't outright a horror novel. It presents itself as a very pleasant satire. It's only when you read passages such as the recording of The Energy Draining Church Bazaar, or the fact that Lint used a cipher based on a torture manual to write a chapter of his magnum opus, or the account of Lint's failed TV series Catty and the Major that you get the sense that something is wrong. And not just sort of wrong, either-- very, very wrong. This feeling won't engage you directly, of course. It lets you think about what you've read, and then in some quiet moment springs upon you and makes you go "Oh, god". I haven't ever had a book do this to me before...they either wear their horror on their sleeve, or reveal it quickly and decide to leave the horror obvious, or continue on their merry way after pouncing on you with it. This, among the other things, makes Lint very, very unique.
            But it isn't for everyone. More than one person will find it trying or stupid. The gimmick of the book is welcome but not quite needed, and the sections on Lint's religious experiences and philosophy tend to wane. The bit about "shallow vanishing" is interesting, but doesn't completely fit in with some of the other work. But overall, the book should carry through, and it's more a matter of what one thinks of the book than how the book is. 
           In the end, it's a book I finally had to break down and buy this summer so it could be put into the private collection. It's hilarious, a little frightening, and hits all the targets it wants to hit. While passages may drag, and the bit about the progressive rock group stands out as mildly incoherent, it's a fun read, will take you less than a week to get through, and multiple readings might allow one better insight into the dark mysteries surrounding Jeff Lint and the "Lint is dead" rumors, which persisted long after his actual death. If you can find it, give it a read. It's worth a look-through, and the low price should be enticing enough. It'll give you a few good laughs, maybe an uneasy feeling or two, and more than that, it'll stay with you long after you've closed it up. 


Next week: In an attempt to get back to coherent works, we return to Tim Powers with Expiration Date, a novel about people snorting ghosts. It's more coherent and less crazy. I swear.

House of Leaves

In an effort to retain the feel of the novel and keep things true to the form of the review, I have preserved all differently-colored words and font choices of the author, just to capture that extra bit of weirdness. 

This is not for you

- Johnny Truant

"...and choose, however, to dismiss this enterprise out of hand, then may I suggest you drink plenty of wine and dance in the sheets of your wedding night, because whether you know it or not, now you are truly prosperous..."

-Zampano, warning both Johnny and the reader

         Way back in the dawn of time about a decade ago, I spent every afternoon after school at the Maplewood Memorial Library. To the point that the librarians all knew me by name and asked me how I was doing. In fact, they still do. Though circumstances mean that I pop up there a hell of a lot less. And in all that time, it took me a while to realize that right up front where I came in, they had seasonal displays. The first time I realized this was in October during my high school career, where I discovered, "Hey! There are horror novels stacked up here! Oh-- they're for Halloween. That makes sense." Yes. I was that dense. But less pretentious. Anyway, in amongst the usual trashy ghost stories and a copy of Harvest Home that had probably been there before the book actually went into publication, there was an oddly-shaped paperback that caught my eye. The cover had a fold-over leaf, and inside was a color plate that showed seemingly random clutter. And this book-- which might have found me as much as I found it, judging from my interactions with it, was House of Leaves. When I picked it up, I thought it was just a quirky book using different colored words and playing around with text. And it is. Sort of. It's also not quite-- oh, fuck it. Let me try to explain:

         House of Leaves is about a young man named Johnny Truant who finds a manuscript in the apartment of a dead old man named Zampano. Near the body are four large, unexplained gouges that look like an animal put them there. Being a young, foolhardy man in the prime of his youth, and not too concerned about the ethical matters of stealing from a dead man, Johnny takes the manuscript with him. Following the man's instructions with the loosely-bundled heap of papers, he begins to edit the work into something coherent, leaving his own footnotes along with it to tell his story. The book itself is mostly comprised of Zampano's critical analysis on a film that has not and does not exist, a film called The Navidson Record, thus also being about the film. And the third part of the plot is the actual film of The Navidson Record, about a photojournalist who tries to make a film about his house in the suburbs...a house that has a small architectural discrepancy of three quarters of an inch at first, but then the small closet that seems to be entirely painted black grows, each shift bringing more insane dimensions and impossible rooms upon impossible rooms, creating a labyrinth that threatens to swallow more than one of the characters who decide to do everything but leave it alone or move.

        The three plots tend to intertwine with each other, elements from one appearing in another, and feeding on each other all at once. Johnny in particular is an unrepentantly unreliable narrator, at one point even going "Hey, not fair, you say. Hey, fuck you, I say." in response to changing a few words in one passage. Later on, he invents entire sequences and openly tells us that he wanted to end a sequence by having two characters murdered, but doesn't. Johnny is openly mocking, even as he's slowly losing his mind, and the book helps him come to terms with his rather checkered life and several incidents. Oh, and it's also driving him slowly insane. Finally, he gets the book published to give himself some peace of mind, though it never stops being more than a book for him.

Oh, and did I mention that this exact same book is the one that's been in your hands the whole time? The book you've probably been trusting to remain truthful to itself on at least some level? I probably should have. Oh well.

       Yes, ladies and gentlemen, House of Leaves is a mindfuck with a pneumatic drill, a book that plays fast and loose with its own ideas and logic to gain some unknown benefit, or maybe just because it can. Text is put in different colors. A chase scene is spread out over several pages to keep you turning the pages just to reach the end of it. One particular sequence creates an air of claustrophobia by clustering the words together smaller and smaller on the pages. As the secret space (yeah, that's the best name for it) builds and builds, the sentences begin to fragment, words fly all over the page, and footnotes circle in on themselves. The protagonists (all three of them...I think) quickly lose control of their lives as the book loses control of what was once a tight, organized format. As things go on, large passages of the book are excised by Zampano for seemingly no reason, Johnny's footnotes become more and more about his experiences which have nothing to do with the book, and Will Navidson becomes trapped in the house that originally intrigued him. And it is brilliant.

     It's a very hard thing to get a book to lie to its reader on this scale. Eventually, an unreliable narrator gets found out, the tricks dissolve into gimmicks, or the narrative thread has to come to a conclusion. It's a rare feat when a book manages to make the reader doubt their own faculties when reading it, to get inside their head and under their skin the way House of Leaves does. And it does a truly amazing job. The individual voices and texts do a lot to immerse and unnerve the reader, be they calm and academic (Zampano), neurotic and frightened (Truant), or weirdly passionate and cold (Navidson. Yes, both at once). Throughout, the sense of immersion is nailed down by footnotes and references to actual things, as well as narration from voices who, in their own way, are easy to listen to. They're trustworthy in their own bizarre fashion.

     Between these voices and the immersive quality of the book, the response it evokes makes it all the more fascinating. This is a book that pretty much commits to its premise fully and wholeheartedly, a book that never backs away, never flinches, and never goes "hey, I'm just kidding, it's all a joke." That it does this makes it somehow all the better, be it the exploration of the spaces, or indeed the unhinging of various minds. In total, that it never once winks or lets on is admirable. It's like a magic show where everyone's forced to believe the illusions are real, because there is no other logical explanation for them. That a book has such an immersive tone and manages to be so fascinating that I can read it over and over again and find new things should be commended.

      But this is far from a flawless classic. Many people will have problems with the different colored words, the text that sometimes will appear upside down and backwards on the middle of a page, and the constant revisions of the truth by Truant and Zampano. There are parts where the actual critical parts are dry and all you want to do is get back to Johnny's story, and parts where Johnny's rambling on and on and you want nothing more than to read Zampano's account of Will's film. Many people don't like to be conned or played with by a book, and will dismiss it on the grounds that it's "too gimmicky", or stupid. But it's a personal choice. Give it a go. If you don't like it, then you don't have to read it.

      In the end, though, I recommend House of Leaves to read. It's something that seems new every time I read it, and it's stuck in my memory since the first time I did. It's a fantastically-written book that moves beyond its gimmicks, and it's easily one of my all-time favorites, a list of which I'll have to get to writing up one of these days, just for posterity. The book also has an awesome soundtrack in the form of the album Haunted by Poe. Maybe find a copy and give it a listen with the book if you like. It may enhance the experience and help with the immersion. My final point is, it's a good book, and well worth reading over and over again. Just watch out for the minotaur.

Next Week:  The pile of weird almost boils over with the bizarro satire/biography book Lint by Steve Aylett.