{"id":19775,"date":"2016-09-01T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T04:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=19775"},"modified":"2016-08-31T15:45:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T19:45:12","slug":"david-means-hystopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2016\/09\/01\/david-means-hystopia\/","title":{"rendered":"David Means: Hystopia<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hystopia<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby David Means (2016)<\/span>\r\nFSG (2016)<\/span>\r\n352 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
This is it, man. The real deal. Please disregard other notes and take this one seriously. I\u2019ve been typing like a madman and failed to get the following, not verbatim, but in essence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hystopia<\/em> is a slippy, trippy novel. At its best, it mirrors the fractured, jumpy mental states of its febrile, badly-rewired protagonists and is both impressively peculiar and disorienting. At its worst it feels like an obvious, failed attempt at a Robert Stone pastiche. For me, the good outweighed the bad, and I came out in favor of Means\u2019s attempts at cultivating a very difficult fictional landscape.<\/p>\n
\"Hystopia\"<\/p>\n
There are, though, problems, and at times Hystopia<\/em> simply feels bashed together. There is a recurrence of a simile that feels lazy (\u201cfrosted by moonlight\u201d for those interested), not problematic because it doesn\u2019t work, but because it appears in quick succession. There is some heinous expositional stuff whereby Means exhibits contempt for an audience that, like, might not get it, man (if you read Hystopia<\/em> you\u2019ll get used to a faux-70s vibe, which is largely successful, occasionally annoying). There is a patronizing and deeply unnecessary chapter called “Duluth” that\u2019s worse than anything else you will read in any of the Booker longlisted books and which should be excised immediately. There are simple plot errors that prod you out of the novel. (With such a novel, I suppose the fallback is that the whole thing is so drug-hazed that these things are to be expected, and should be overlooked, and are even intentional,<\/em> but there\u2019s surely a difference between a pilled-up Vietnam veteran talking gibberish and an amped-up proofreader\u2019s inability to successfully fact-check.) However, Hystopia<\/em> still has plenty enough going for it to be considered a success.<\/p>\n
Eugene Allen has returned from Vietnam and, as part of a process of catharsis and self-psychiatry, has written an autobiographical novel, Hystopia, <\/em>which, in true Russian Doll style, is itself nested in an alternate world in which President Kennedy is in his third term of office. The novel-within-the-novel itself constitutes Allen\u2019s fictionalized derangements made somewhat palatable\/more conventional, his trauma set to the incessant strains of Iggy Pop and a backdrop of particularly-crazed Vietnam vets run dangerously amok. The novel-within-the-novel also serves as his partial attempt to make some kind of sense, not only out of the Vietnam War, but out of his own pre-war past, neither of which he can recover from.<\/p>\n
Allen’s\/Means’s novel, as mentioned, owes plenty to the fictional devastations of Robert Stone, who similarly wove cultural milestones with his terrifying, irrevocably damaged milieu of sociopaths and estranged losers. Means, like Stone, makes the political personal, and vice versa, but adds a Philip K. Dick flourish to Hystopia<\/em> that\u2019s admirable and daring. We\u2019re all familiar with numerous fictional representations of Vietnam: this avoids losing itself in much-visited territory by bringing it all back home, to a post-Vietnam, pre-apocalyptic USA roamed by rogue “failed enfolds” (more on this shortly) who have not had their demons assuaged sufficiently to reintegrate and are, instead, targets for a shady Government faction called Psych Corps, which is “dedicated to maintaining the nation\u2019s mental hygiene by any means necessary.”<\/p>\n
Their attempts to do this involve “enfolding” returning combat veterans, which basically means getting rid of traumatic memories with the aid of near-identical re-enactments of the scenarios that plague the afflicted along with heavy doses of the drug Tripizoid. Those enfolded are warned that certain triggers — deeply orgasmic sex or very cold water — can quickly demolish their recovery. Failed enfolds — in this case the horribly damaged and psychopathic Rake character — run amok, addictively and seemingly helplessly reconstructing scenes of violence and torture. Rake is the seething epitome of the forgotten solider thrown back into a country he can no longer understand or inhabit, twisted by his experiences and ready to blow.<\/p>\n
Them<\/em>. It\u2019s us against them <\/em>and they know it, and the thing about them<\/em> is that the only thing they really know, if you get my drift, is that they failed me. The failed me big-time by not taking care of me when I returned from the war. They took me down to Texas and put me into one of their re-enactments and pumped me full of Tripizoid, and then all they did was double it down, increase what they were trying to decrease. If they knew how bad I was feeling, they\u2019d never sleep at night. They\u2019d lock the doors and nail the windows. They\u2019d put me in their prayers and ask for protection specifically against me. They\u2019d walk faster and glance back more often.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A member of Psych Corps — Singleton — is, along with another agent, Wendy, drawn towards Rake at the behest of his commanding officer, Klein. Singleton and Wendy are carrying out a clandestine and deeply improper (agents are not meant to become emotionally entangled, particularly not these *spoiler alert*) affair in an Orwellian atmosphere of hawkish surveillance (in which suddenly-solicitous waitresses deliver imprecatory warnings). Klein (who comes across like General Jack D. Ripper meets a cartoon Nixon) is a stream of barked directives and avuncular pep-talk aphorisms, and seems, perhaps by his own design, to have mercurial objectives which Singleton either ignores or mulls over the ambivalence of, eventually taking matters into his own (inevitable, and quite possibly Klein-approved, as it turns out) hands.<\/p>\n
Rake, meanwhile, vanishes for days at a time from a backwater ranch set back from the road, in which also resides fellow veteran and buddy Hank (who has a strange accord with trees, a bit of a motif here), Hank\u2019s prone-to-strange-fits mother, and Meg, who Hank loves but who is Rake\u2019s captive obsession. Another character, Haze, forms a combustible and eventually crucial counterpoint to the characters in that strand of the novel, before both parts of Hystopia<\/em> are finally woven together.<\/p>\n
The solemn nature of Hystopia<\/em> is perhaps inevitable, but the absence of bleak laughs bogs the book down. There is very little by way of levity, and Means\u2019s po-faced, brow-furrowed penchant for hurtling through glum set-pieces runs its own risk: some of the scenes almost topple over into parody. The Rake character is so utterly, indefatigably awful that he can feel facile, a ruined-grunt appliqu\u00e9, and there are stand-offs, such as the following, which walk a fine line between tense and gigglesome.<\/p>\n
The next shot\u2019s going to be between your eyes if you don\u2019t put that pan down and shut the burner off.<\/span><\/p>\n
You’ll laugh it off when we\u2019re equally armed, Rake said. You let me have a gun so we\u2019re on equal terms and then I\u2019ll know I can trust you, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n
You think I\u2019d trust you with a gun right now?<\/span><\/p>\n
I think you let me have a gun, you trust me, I trust you, and we\u2019re on equal terms, Rake said.<\/span><\/p>\n
You want a gun? Hank said.<\/span><\/p>\n
That’s right. Let me reach behind and get mine, and I\u2019ll hold it on you and you hold yours on me and we\u2019ll be back where we were before all this started.<\/span><\/p>\n
Man, Hank said. If I didn\u2019t know you so long I\u2019d think you were crazy. But knowing you as I do, I\u2019ll let you get your gun, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n
Rake reached around and pulled out his gun and pointed it and said, There. Now we\u2019re both men. Now we\u2019re each facing the same shit.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This kind of thing can be overplayed and veer very close to parody. In attempting to convey the convoluted nature of such psychosis and reinforce his “enfolding” idea, Means sometimes doesn\u2019t seem to know how to grind things to a halt, allowing them instead to crash-land. He\u2019ll then spend pages recultivating a snappy and involving atmosphere only to detonate it again with a slightly overwrought exchange, and so on.<\/p>\n
What Hystopia<\/em> does gives you, for the most part — other than all those things you might well expect (much about the redemptive\/healing nature of art, a plea for sanity during similarly insane times, mysticism and stoicism as admirable substitutes for those unwilling to heal, the moral\/karmic differentiation between choosing to kill and killing to survive) — is a surprisingly blistering read. For all its knowing complexities and layers of bizarro plot paradoxes, very rarely will you feel particularly lost in the mayhem. Hystopia<\/em> often reads like a dream, especially when Means sticks to his strong suit; i.e.<\/em>, when he lets the tale do the telling, rather than the characters. Means is a masterful writer of short fiction (a discipline he is certainly better at, judging by his debut effort) and has clearly sought out a suitable subject matter with which to head out beyond twenty-page limitations. For the most part, he pulls off the longer form (though comparisons with Nabokov surely cannot be serious). Occasionally, the material, and his overly-didactic handling of it, takes the book away from him, and the reader, but if you can forgive those instances there\u2019s much here to appreciate.<\/p>\n
This is it, man. The real deal. Please disregard other notes and take this one seriously. I\u2019ve been typing like a madman and failed to get the following, not verbatim, but in essence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lee reviews David Means’s Booker longlisted novel Hystopia<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":19518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,280],"tags":[978,977,1072,551],"coauthors":[516],"class_list":["post-19775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-david-means","tag-2010s","tag-977","tag-2016-booker-prize","tag-booker-prize"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Hystopia.jpg?fit=600%2C921&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-58X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19776,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19775\/revisions\/19776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19775"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}