Aarix Reads
Animal Money
Michael Cisco
Finished: 08/07/2024
Finally finished--I put this novel down half a year ago and only just summoned the grit to read the rest of it. It's not because the book is bad or even boring, though it is dense, and it's 800 page bulk is pretty imposing even in ereader form. Do I have anything insightful to say about this book? Um. To do that, I'd need to give it a second read with a notepad on hand. And one of those big cluttered red-threaded pin-boards agonized over by conspiracy theorists and TV detectives.... For someone who's taken an embarrassingly long hiatus from reading anything, I sure picked a doozy to throw myself into, huh!
This is one of few books I picked up solely because the cover art sucked me in. I mean, just look at this shit. Happily, the novel itself is every bit as vulgar and psychedelic as the cover would lead one to believe. It is an angry book--angry at the absurdity and incapability of the systems we are all thrall to. It's irreverent and hilarious too. More than anything else, it is bizzare--which seems like a too-obvious thing to reduce it to, but as a newcomer to what Wikipedia has dubbed the "bizzaro fiction" genre, naturally the bizzareness is what's going to strike me first. There is so much going on in this book that I'm not quite sure how to really even engage with it, let alone how to give you a synopsis. Since I'm neither an academic nor willing to become one for the sake of my recreational reading, I found myself often simply kicking back and letting the prose wash over me as I might an esoteric poem.
I enjoy Cisco's style of writing. It's verbose and frequently overwrought, but I like it that way. I'd always rather prose be overly colourful than overly dry, and Cisco has you seeing colours outside the visible spectrum. It's also the only thing which kept me going through the most obtuse sections of the book, which I'm going to have to admit sailed completely over my head. This book jumps so frenetically through time, space, perspective, tense, and point-of-view that it's often hard to parse what is even happening, let alone the deeper meaning of the metaphors at play. Despite all this, I found it mostly enjoyable...
... Mostly. This book might have resonated more with me were it not quite so specifically US American. To the rest of the world (to which I belong), there's something superfluous about writing a surreal horror comedy about the American condition, since as far as we are concerned the USA is already a surreal horror comedy. Not to say that capitalism isn't an affliction felt globally, but... fellow non-yanks will symathise with my impatience for all things yank. What's more, the continuous barrage of absurdity and horror became fatiguing after a while, which I'm sure was an intentional effect. Everyone in a city getting exploded and liquefied and sucked up into a cellophane tornado of prismatic flame is pretty exciting the first few times it happens, but even that becomes pretty banal after a while. Juuuust like the horrors of eking out a living in this society, amirite everyone?
In all it was an exhausting read. I would go so far as to call it wanky. But who doesn't enjoy a bit of a wank...? Exactly. I'm gonna have to read more of Cisco's stuff to see how it compares and enjoy more of his tasty prose.... though not before I go and read something more conventional first as a palette cleanser. I may not have the full 3000 IQ necessary to completely understand this book, but I did enjoy the ride.
Random excerpt for your enjoyment:
Assiyeh is certain. Without having to go to the windows, she can see it descend against the nearly full moon, which has emerged through a rent in the clouds. The wing falls past it, warping in a trembling plume of tumultuously disturbed air. The moon swims behind that disruption; its surface seems to boil and its outline loses its shape. The clouds close over it again and there is nothing to see in the air but a few lights descending toward the airfield. The plane wiped the moon from the sky.
Assiyeh can feel the titan bulk of the airplane swoop past the terminal, following the runway. Its voluminous cape of air dashes over the terminal, buffeting the heavy windows, and making all the outer lights flicker like candles. They go on flickering. The plane hurtles down with a roar that blends with the drone and even with the muttering on the PA, and when the wheels touch down with a burst of smoke and a bark of pain there is a piercing scream that dies away instantly.
It’s taxiing now, out there.
The plane veers back toward the terminal like a shark. She sees the lights approaching smoothly, the plane pulls up to the terminal, turning its colossal snake head. The interior of the plane is dark. The jetway lunges, planting its lamprey mouth over the hatch.