the most exciting novel to come down the pike in ages . . . .
the amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Assisted-Living-Swedish-Literature-Series/dp/156478682X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334151309&sr=1-1
i’m about ten pages in and it’s funny, dark, insightful, creepy, astonishingly well-written, exciting, and a million other praiseful adjectives. i recommend you read it. every other line is worth quoting and showing to a friend. just one picked at random:
— There comes a time in every man’s life, boy, when sight goes dim and orgasms are nothing more than bladdercramps … the people you love are gone and nowhere much feels like home … when tha thappens, it’s time to break yourself of the habit of living … you’ve made your peace … you’re ready to seek the light … because you’ve stopped fearing the dark …
obviously you’ll notice the Celinian ellipses; the rest of the grammar is high-quality as well. i can’t say enough good things of the ~10-15 pages i’ve read so far. it’s touted as a “book of evil,” but the characters are well-drawn and the premise is interesting in itself. teratologen is being repped as the ‘modern marquis de sade,’ but don’t make any mistake, he’s a much better writer from what i’ve seen so far.
perhaps what's most exciting about this novel is that it's written by a contemporary writer (there's a vice review on this but it's not very good and just about parading the 'bad stuff' that teratologen includes in the book) but actually reads like something that could have been written by a 20s frenchman, a russian writer from the khrushchev era, a postwar japanese absurdist, a modern american writer aping house of leaves who's also paid attention to his literary history, a contemporary of the marquis de sade, or even perhaps michel houellebecq himself. there's a marvelous range of language in only 15 pages: we begin in a chilling forest in the dead of winter ('It was so pure and still you could hear God breathe . . . So cold the spit froze on your lips and your eyelids stopped working . . . Grandpa had on Predator Camouflage gear, white with a black twigpattern, and a werewolffurcoat. He had on camelhairpants, roughluxury homespunshoes, a guneapigfurscarf and an NKVD hat.' The soviet hat chilled me!!!!') that's followed by an almost heart-warming scene of familial love between the grandpa and child ('How are you, Grandpa?' 'Not so good . . . Lately my body's all bitchbitchbitch . . . every second's a struggle . . .it'll be over soon . . . I think I hear the deat hrattle in my throat . . .' 'Are you sick, Grandpa?' 'I'm old and tired, kid . . . I've outlived myself . . . Now come here so I can hug you . . . My boy, my boy . . . I love you so much it shames me . . . and it's not your fault that Grandpa is sad and has to croak soon . . .'). these vivid scenes are preceded by a brilliant narrator who describes the 'found literature' that makes up the corpus of the book; it's beyond my powers of description to sketch this for you, i'd have to quote far too much, so i'll leave it to you to read; the scenes are also preceded by an absolutely hilarious letter describing the grandpa's death and subsequent reappearance in front of a church as a rude, disembodied head that offers to 'suck dick for a smoke, and for a drink lick women, but only in the ass,' before being charged by a group of crowbar-wielding sextons led by a certain Epileptic Martin.
in short, teratologen is working within the recognizable bounds of good world literature, but what he's writing seems to be completely new and maybe even unprecedented: this makes for an exciting novel; teratologen is doing something that all working writers today should aspire to.