Just some random praise for David Wong's John Dies at the End, here, which I dug out of a thrift store just now, and may read again (as soon as I finish my re-read of Dune). It's one of the most fun experiences I've had with a book since I last plunged into Robert Anton Wilson, whose novels have a similar fusion of the philosophical and profound, on the one hand, and the over-the-top wacky on the other, except instead of Wilson's more-or-less good-natured, agnostic optimism about human experience and potential, which informs even the most ridiculous scenarios in his writing, Wong - real name Jason Pargin, of Cracked.com - creates a universe of malign, apocalyptic, mindbending paranormal absurdity in which to plunge his more-or-less well-meaning, but not particularly competent or intelligent, slacker protagonists, whose limitations will be familiar to you, even if the scenarios they face are not. The book has a bit of the ho-hum attitude towards (averting?) the end of the world that you find in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, but updated for our age, and made vastly more demented; enough so that it's a wonder that it still manages to feel familiar, like there is something about the paranormal investigators who are the main characters doing battle with a poltergeist made of frozen meat - something in their ATTITUDE towards the challenge - that sinks profoundly deep, despite the many implausibles at hand. The Don Coscarelli film is fun, and an accurate representation of what's in store, but vastly foreshortens the story - something that could not be helped, shy of reconfiguring it as a long-form TV series - so if you saw it and liked it, I would highly recommend picking up the book, if you haven't already...
And if you have, but stopped there, may I add that the second novel in the series - This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It - pushes the philosophical aspects of the first book even further, and maybe is even richer, so you can't take it "just" as a horror-comedy, unless you're really not paying attention. I have not yet read the third book in the series - the aptly-titled What the Hell Did I Just Read? - but am enjoying John Valeri's review of it here, which gives you a peek at the plot and its "unabashed lunacy" - though I love that Valeri also notes that there is a serious aspect to the novel, saying it tells "a story of survival that, despite its many absurdities, is one we’re all living." The book manages to be weirdly therapeutic, vastly inventive, and idiotically grotesque at the same time - and for a measure of its cleverness, its hidden sincerity, note that the whole opening set up - the question of whether the axe is the same axe - is the equal to a question of the problem of identity that was seriously discussed in my Introduction to Metaphysics class back in my first foray into undergrad studies at SFU, when I was considering getting a philosophy degree, though instead of an axe, our professor, Norman Swartz, used the Golden Hind, I believe, posing a problem for the class: because as parts wore out on the ship, they would be thrown away and replaced, which presumably could happen so many times that the ship might lose all its original bits; would it then be the same ship? (Discussions turned to further consider the implications, if someone carefully salvaged all the thrown away bits and reconstructed the ship; which would have the better claim to be the "real" Golden Hind - the one made of all the original parts, or the one with - Swartz favoured this version - the unbroken continuity-through-time...?
I'm sure there are rock bands out there that this ponderable might resonate with, as well, but Wong uses an axe and a zombie... which is much, much more fun than the Golden Hind, by me, but essentially the same question, framed as the true mystery of the universe. Really fun to be taken back to Professor Swartz's class in this unexpected way.
Thanks David Wong (or Jason Pargin) for having written these books... they're weirdly inspiring, as therapeutic as they are gross, funny, and absurd. Seriously, folks... these are a fun read...
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