The prototypical cyberpunk novel, pounded out on a manual typewriterby a non-techhead whose pessimistic insights on the humanity/technologycodependency groove are completely on-target. Essentially it'sa novel about the ultimate melding with the ultimate computer system,to wit: cyberspace, a virtual reality graphical user interface thatis to the mouse-and-menu "intuitiveness" of present-day software as the silicon age is to the stone age. It is a reality: data flow as consciousness, mind as soul, body as superfluous meat, and sex as the great spiraling cosmic download. In the polluted urban wasteland of Gibson's Sprawl, biochemical reality is modified for convenience by cybernetic fudging: brain-chip implants, designer drugs,and bionic attachments. Case, the cyberspace cowboy antihero, lives for the transfiguration of entering "the consensual hallucination that was the matrix", of leaving the necessary evil of his flesh behind. It's the religion of escapism, like a holy psychedelic voyage, but powered more by the manifest-destiny thrill of exploration than by fear. Major LSD analogs here, that's for sure.

Gibson's writing is evocative and clean, his characters exaggerated and melodramatic, but well-proportioned for the limitless confinesof his universe. Regardless of its big-ticket placement as sire ofthe "mirrorshades" literary generation, this book is afilter-tip cigarette stubbed out in the eyeball of technocracy. CoyVelvet Underground references included, free of charge. --K.S.

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #2)

Hardboiled existentialist poetry masquerading as a novel. The transitionsin the narrative are broken up by ending each segment of text on whateverpage it happens to end on and beginning the next segment on an entirely new page, whether it's one short paragraph or 3-1/2 pages long.Artsy, but effective. Gifford's protagonist, Franz (nudge-nudge, wink-wink), is a hip, erudite ex-college boy who has fled his weird, angst-ridden life in the U.S. to become a bagman for "counterfeit ivory smugglers"in a shadowy Central American country somewhere near Mexico. The novel is divided between the perfunctory thriller plot (intrigue, murder, revolution) and eloquent, surreal flashbacks into Franz's multifacetedly bizarre life. It's the old Ambrose Bierce/B. Traven shtickof venturing into the jungle--both literally and figuratively--to meet your maker.

There are moments of startling power as well as hilarious one-liners. We get to watch Franz lose his mind because he cannot assimilate themess of his life. He's a burnout waiting to be swept under the carpet. His past emerges in revealing chunks in the flashbacks, but rather than slowly filling in a jigsaw puzzle, the puzzle just gets more and more complex, the details more far-flung and insane. Sample follows:

His penis was hard but he didn't want to masturbate.He drank some gaseosa water and belched. He wouldn't want to eat,either. He had always to have something to look forward to, for somereason that used to upset Marie. If he could find her maybe she wouldtalk to him about the boy. They could go to California. His cock wentsoft as soon as he thought about Marie. He'd pull through withouther.

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #2)

At the time I read Port Tropique, I had no idea Gifford was the guy who wrote Wild at Heart, the novel on which the crappy David Lynch film about Sailor Ripley and LulaPace Fortune was based. Actually, the movie is about 85% David Lynch and 15% Barry Gifford: the plot is completely altered, the charactersare warped into Lynchian cartoons, the "Fuck me!" scene isgratuitously tacked on, and the essential humanity of Gifford's laid-back road trip through the southwest is stripped away to make room for the manipulative, push-button taboo violation you get in your basic Lynch film. So, anyway, the novel is a slight, warm exploration of two people in desperate circumstances trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do--both immediately and in general--and telling each other a lot of stories about their lives. In the process they smoke a lot of brand-name cigarettes (Lula: Mores, Sailor: Camels, same as his mother who died from lung cancer), meet a lot of strange people, and do a lot of off-kilter things.

A key example to demonstrate the difference between the film and the novel: early on in both, Lula tells Sailor she was raped when she was thirteen. In the film, we are treated to a hideous scene of Lula in her nightgown, crying, and the rapist, her ugly <169>Uncle<170> Pooch, brutally zipping up and leaving her there to howl. In the novel we get this:

"...we did it there on Abilene's old bed."

"`We' did it?" said Sailor. "What do you mean? Didn't he force you?"

"Well, sure," said Lula. "But he was super gentle, you know? I mean he raped me and all, but I guess there's all different kinds of rapes. I didn't exactly want him to do it but I suppose once it started it didn't seem all that terrible."

"Did it feel good?"

Lula put down her hairbrush and looked in at Sailor. He was lying there naked and he had an erection.

"Does my tellin' you about this get you off?" she said. "Is that why you want to hear it?"

Sailor laughed. "I can't help it happenin', sweetheart. Did he do it more than once?"

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #2)

last update 7/30/97


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