Two Gen-X books slack off

The Siege of Gresham

AK Press

The world only needs one Thomas Pynchon, a writer who brilliantly manages to balance modern-day cynicism, decay, commercialism in some of this half century's best writing. But Ray Murphy, in his new book, "The Siege of Gresham," seems to think we need two.

"Many were lost," Murphy declares about the state of society in his opening chapter, preaching to his readers in an abusive, post-apocalyptic style mastered by movies "Blade Runner" and writers like William Burroughs. Murphy picks 14 alcoholic anti-heroes, whose meaningless, boredom-drenched lives are painfully similar to Pynchon's "whole sick crew" in his novel "V."

Similarities aside, Murphy's plot is impotent compared to the intricate plots of Pynchon's novels. This group decides after a few drinks too many to embark on a war against Portland's suburb of Gresham. Gresham is a false Eden embodying consumer culture's cookie-cutter excesses and the middle class' rejection of the 14 friends. And all too typically, their quest ends in postmodern anti-climax, reminding the reader once again that life is strange and everything is meaningless.

This quest pits them against an array of stereotypical villains of modern day drudgery: skinheads, bureaucratic post-office workers and gang-members. These confrontations are punctuated by supposedly unconsciously spoken bits of apocalyptic wisdom reminding the reader of all the little problems of modern life.

Murphy abandons characterization for flat, theme-pointing lines like "'Why can't I even say what I mean half the time,' said Debbie querulously." Murphy struggles to evoke immediacy and confusion with disjointed diction and horrible punctuation abuse - techniques that only succeed in producing frustrating lines.

Without a solid character base, Murphy resorts to revealing his themes through the strange, dictionary-aided cynicism of his supposedly muddled narrator: "I experienced a sense of renewal coexistive with a rising dread." Along with his uninteresting characters, Murphy lets incoherent violence remind the reader again how desensitized and purposeless modern audiences are. "Sex and violence never appeared so vital," the book's cover cheers, hoping to herald the work as revitalized pulp fiction.

Finally, his barely concealed themes remind one of an apocalyptic TV evangelist who just won't stop reminding us about the horrible state of the world. "Siege" is self-consciously obscene, reducing Murphy's message to such trite, garbled phrases as "I realized now, viscerally, that the great conviction of my adulthood was that I stood on ethics shortly to be resolved as severely flawed, blinded, by self-interest."

With all of its problems, Murphy's book is a reminder, at best, of two things: Yes, the world is a dark place with little meaning, but there are vastly better ways of dealing with the crisis of the MTV generation in art.

- Jason Boog

Headcrash

Vintage

Are you sick of stupid "information superhighway" jokes? You will be. And the author who will bring it to you? Bruce Bethke.

Bruce Bethke's newest novel, "Headcrash," is a humorous look at the cyberpunk genre, but the book does not stay true to its satirical intentions. Somewhere around the middle of the novel, the plot takes over and all satirical pretensions fall away exposing the book as a cheap and unoriginal clone of better cyberpunk works.

The protagonist, Jack Burroughs, is by day a drone at an enormous computer company and by night hacker extraordinaire Max Kool. Jack spends his time playing Doom-esque virtual reality games in his office and slumming with his best friend, Joe LeMat, aka Gunnar Savage, on the Internet. Here is where the awful "information superhighway" jokes come in. The Internet is depicted, when Bethke observes its virtual representation, as a large highway. The larger the bandwidth, the more lanes on the highway.

The plot, such as it is, is a warmed over rehash of every bad detective cliché in the book. The swell-looking dame, the shady underground figures, the plot twists that no one but the narrator can follow. However, the book has a few saving graces. In attempting to replicate textually the form of hypertext, Bethke uses sidebars very similar to Coupland's "Generation X."

"Headcrash" begins with Jack being fired from his job, abused by a pack of street-toughs in varsity jackets and being contacted by the swell-looking babe, Amber. After a gratuitous sex scene or two, Amber explains that she has been ripped off by a John Grisham/John Clancy type novelist and wants the money he owes her. After a few more gratuitous sex scenes, she hires Jack and Joe. The novel is full of seemingly beautiful women who throw themselves at Jack. His co-workers, on-line ex-girlfriends and mystery women all desire Jack, for no discernible reason. Every woman in the novel, except, thank God, for Jack's Mom and Joe's girlfriend, try to get into Jack's pants.

The real kick comes when Jack becomes an Internet super-user, more specifically, how he becomes a super-user. Jack receives a buttplug that allows him to become a super-user and therefore a superhero. Unfortunately, his enhanced senses are glossed over too soon and the reader is left wanting more. From this point on, the novel gives itself over to mechanically drawing out the plot and inserting twists that can be seen a mile off.

The novel is rife with puns. From the aforementioned visual highway pun to a couple dozen plays off of the word "cyberpunk," including a group of teenage Afghanistani punks called "Khyberpunks."

The original cyberpunk book, "Neuromancer," had carved out an interesting new niche in the science fiction canon and paved the way for more authors to experiment and create. No new ideas were fed into the genre and it withered on the vine. "Headcrash," is the obvious result: cliched, confusing and predictable.

- Morgan Johnson

04-10-98