Friday, June 21, 2002
Title: Atom
Author: Steve Aylett
Publisher: Phoenix
I wonder how many Steve Aylett books you need to read before you go barking mad? I mean this is my fifth and I've got another two lined up for reading. Though at just over 100 pages Atom is a pretty quick read, as is Bigot Hall which I followed Atom with and am already half way through.
Anyway for those that haven't read Aylett or one of my reviews of Aylett's work it should be pointed out that he is a potent writer - free flowing stream of conscious simulated dialogues, walking a fine line between absurdist humour and semi-complete nonsense.
Maintaining certain benchmarks of what mode Aylett is in can be useful - taking The Inflatable Volunteer as a constant of absurd and Shamanspace as the most coherent of his work to date. On that scale Atom is towards TIV but isn't quite as extreme, a manageable plot and flow being possible to summarise after reading the book. Though plot is a tangible idea, one which on the whole Aylett has a tendency to neglect, wandering off on diversions and desperately padding out.
The plot in Atom's case is that a brain has been stolen from Beerlight's brain factory - labelled as that of Tony Curtis but actually formerly residing in the skull of Franz Kafka. Beerlight is a crime city, crime is art and a way of life it seems. With which it isn't a surprise that there would be several groups interested in the brain in question - so one group turns up at the offices of Atom & Drowner to secure the services of Taffy Atom private defective. Hoping that his PI modal will help retrieve the brain for them; even though he turns them down another group believes he must be involved so they also start asking Atom questions. Quickly this progresses to the point where so many people believe that Atom is involved that he might as well be.
With that set up firmly set up Aylett works with the PI noir, adding a mutant fish for partnership and a smoky dame. Filling out the picture are the gangsters, with their whacked nicks that define or contradict their characters. Somewhere several steps behind everyone else are the police who work out their own mode, where everything is a crime with only the evidence to be creatively invented for charges to be brought about. With all parties armed and spontaneous with the art of the state of the art weapons anything can happen and in Aylett's hands it does.
RVWR: PTR
June 2002
