John King (25)

From negrocomics.wordpress.com WARNING THIS REVIEW IS FAIRLY ANALYTICAL

Guy Psycho shows King's noteworthy love of comic books and B movies, documented on his site under "curatory of schlock." The reader gets a strong sense when reading down Guy Psycho's relatively slender spine that the novel, far from being one of those "serious" books, is to be read as a comic-book ride, which is appropriate since Gilgamesh began as the comic book of its day, as did Faust.

Right away this writer liked how show more the story is about a fictional band, because fictitious music is some of the best (see hatestep). In the front of the book we get the members of the band conveniently listed, followed by the admonition "style is meaning." Thanks, professor! The book then drops us into a wheel of speeding events that definitely give flashbacks of harried nights on tour, all arranged to a sort of ritual importance that should not be overlooked just because it's a crappy band on a crappy tour.

Early on in the text we get something of Douglas Adams' ability to render the prose itself scaled to its significance, oscillating within painstaking precision and hyperbolic decadence, though this attenuates as the plot thickens. King writes to write, and his affinity for comic book slapstick backs up against all kinds of cultural signifiers and name-drops disguised as hallucinations. This writer bets that such economy is probably what he was going for in terms of technique in Guy Psycho. What Carl Hiaasen would read like if he weren't a boring normy.

The text is at turns cleverly satiric, intentionally "psychedelic," as some commentators have named it, and often claustrophobically jumbled. Without giving anything away, the whole story is in a series of interiors, and there are times when this writer stopped reading to imagine both how all these vistas would render to the naked eye, as well as how stressful some of these leaps of imagination physically would be.

I easily could grab King's references to ancient literature, but part of me wonders if the lay reader would get some of the characters'/settings' intentions/functions. My only critique would be for King to slow down and let us feel it, and to let the characters really work things out. There are some feelings expressed inwardly by the guitar player, but by way of late-placed exposition, instead of an opportunity to test Guy's ego in front of the family, or make an in-your-face parallel to the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu that many readers might need. Or not!

I would like to see the band members really come up against each other's abilities, will and personalities to provide some kind of tension in need of decision.

All in all Guy Psycho is filled with hilarious visuals, insightful gags and a brief lesson in ancient epic. What Guy has to be ashamed of is up to the reader. show less