Minister Faust

This is just a clever, clever book. The conceit is that this is a self-help book for superheroes, by a psychologist for superheroes. The author is clearly self-aggrandizing and selling her product, but Faust gets his story through with awesome aplomb. He also gets an amazing amount of commentary in by what the psychologist chooses to ignore or focus on in her patients, such as the utter bloody racism of one of the characters, and minimizing the rape of one of the male characters. The entire show more time you read the book you have to remember that it's being written after the events of the book, and what we know to be true reading through the lines and what the "author" (not Faust, but Dr. Brain) presents to be true are not one and the same.

It's... there are a lot of layers to this book, and I'm somewhat at a loss for how to describe it. It's really just very good and I'm quite sad that I've already read the only two books I can find records of Minister Faust having published, honestly. show less

Like the best comic books and graphic novels, Dr. Brain can be read as a kick-ass actioneer or, if you prefer, as a sly satire of our world. Faust is not exactly subtle with the metaphors; racism, paranoia, and xenophobia are all staples of the superhero subculture, and Dr. Brain follows this path fairly closely. What Faust brings to the party is intricately funny word-play, ingenious plot developments, and true love for his subject matter. And fun. Man, is this fun.

Read the rest of the show more review here. show less

Afro-Canadian political activist, poet, and playwright Minister Faust's first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, begins at the end. Protagonist Hamza Achmed Qebhsennuf Senesert, a disenfranchised twentysomething living in 1995 Edmonton (E-Town as he calls it), freely admits, "In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end." The opening is the most conventional piece of this nonlinear novel.

Hamza and his best friend/roommate Yeh (Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles) are the show more Coyote Kings. Steeped in the world of pop culture, the Coyotes see everything within those terms. Comic books, Star Trek, science fiction movies, Philip K. Dick, and much more obscure references litter the prose.

Faust's humorous novel is not merely a collection of cultural trivia. He has produced a well-conceived story about redemption, friendship, and the possible end of the world with heaping samples of politics and religion thrown in. For the most part, the characters are divided into amusing protagonists and singular antagonists. The Fanboys, a collection of five geeks, are the extreme revenge for anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different. Their employer, an ex-jock and successful entrepreneur, devises a plan for metaphysical Armageddon. Hamza's girlfriend – an enigma who worships Alan Moore, can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars, and is given to erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior – is the one person who can stop the diabolical scheme.

With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd, it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel. Although flawed – the plot unveils too slowly, and there are too many viewpoints – The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad explodes off the page as an intelligent, fun-filled pop-culture adventure.

(This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, August 20, 2004.)
Link: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid:225323] show less

Six of the world's biggest superheroes in employer-mandated group therapy to resolve the in-fighting that is tearing the Fantastic Order Of apart. Narrated by their celebrity therapist in the form what is nominally a self-help book for superheroes; unfortunately, she is too busy writing a gossipy, self-aggrandizing tell-all to realize that she is anything but an objective observer. Some of the superheroes map to iconic DC and Marvel characters (but contextualized against the real world, show more instead of the fantastical worlds of DC and Marvel); others are superheroized historical figures. (Malcom X! Whose superpower is his words!) Riddled with pop-culture and history references, Notebooks of Dr. Brain is scythingly sharp meta on popular culture and post-Civil Rights era racism. show less