Louse [Hardcover]

David Grand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1998

What if Howard Hughes ruled his corporate empire from a chrome-and-glass citadel, served by problem gamblers who've been enslaved so they can pay off their debts? Louse is only partly the answer to that question. It's also a deft piece of corporate satire, an Orwellian fable about absolute power, even a kind of religious allegory. Author David Grand's remarkable first novel follows Herman Q. Louse, valet to the invalid, germ-phobic billionaire Herbert Horatio Blackwell, as he navigates the conspiracy-ridden world Blackwell has constructed in the middle of the Nevada desert. Louse's story is interspersed with snippets of memos, bulletins, press releases, and public confessions--Grand's modern version of groupthink--all of which provide a darkly comic counterpoint to the novel's growing intrigue. There are more twists and turns in this book than in your average Hollywood thriller, yet somehow the plot--as well-oiled as it is--becomes hardly the point. Louse is a chilling look at the fate of the individual in a collectivized world, as appropriate to today's corporate drones as to the denizens of Orwell's 1984.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What if Howard Hughes ruled his corporate empire from a chrome-and-glass citadel, served by problem gamblers who've been enslaved so they can pay off their debts? Louse is only partly the answer to that question. It's also a deft piece of corporate satire, an Orwellian fable about absolute power, even a kind of religious allegory. Author David Grand's remarkable first novel follows Herman Q. Louse, valet to the invalid, germ-phobic billionaire Herbert Horatio Blackwell, as he navigates the conspiracy-ridden world Blackwell has constructed in the middle of the Nevada desert. Louse's story is interspersed with snippets of memos, bulletins, press releases, and public confessions--Grand's modern version of groupthink--all of which provide a darkly comic counterpoint to the novel's growing intrigue. There are more twists and turns in this book than in your average Hollywood thriller, yet somehow the plot--as well-oiled as it is--becomes hardly the point. Louse is a chilling look at the fate of the individual in a collectivized world, as appropriate to today's corporate drones as to the denizens of Orwell's 1984.

From Publishers Weekly

Debut novelist Grand evokes the frightening, impersonal futures of Kafka, Orwell and Philip K. Dick in this chilling account of a gambler who forfeits his memory in order to pay off his debts. When the reader first encounters him, Herman Q. Louse works as a domestic orderly in an ultramodern complex in the middle of the desert. His daily task is to administer near-lethal narcotic injections to Herbert Horatio "Poppy" Blackwell, the Howard Hughes-like Executive Controlling Partner of the Resort Town of G. A fabulously wealthy aviator and movie producer wasted now by age and drugs, Blackwell has created the hermetically self-sufficient Resort of G as the apotheosis of his megalomania and as an assurance of entering into Paradise. Staffed with numberless drugged drones who must study their "social contracts" to know what is and is not appropriate behavior, G promises the future trustee the chance to move up in the system by moving down "and in the process of moving down, he will move up." Louse, in many ways a model worker (he hunts vermin with alacrity and obediently injects himself in the palm when he feels the need to sleep), is troubled by the introduction of subversive forces into G's humming efficiency, forces insinuated by Poppy himself, which call Louse's very identity into question. Grand methodically and convincingly constructs Louse's antiseptic, delusionary environment with a control, dark humor and vertiginous imagination that are remarkable in a first novel.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1st edition (November 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559704497
• ISBN-13: 978-1559704496
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,209,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Out there but excellent, April 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Louse (Hardcover)

A must read for anyone who can't quite shake the feeling that we're all being taken for a ride. The prose is excellent, if exotic, and while certain characters aren't developed as much as one might hope, Grand's storytelling abilities are strong and make for a vastly enjoyable read.

This book is probably not for everyone. An open mind may be essential. If you're living in New York and suspect you may be working too much, this book will resonate.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Brilliance, October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Louse (Hardcover)

This is an absolutely amazing book, some sort of crazy progeny of Terry Gilliam & Joan Didion. With mesmerizing precision David Grand simultaneously constructs & unravels this fantastical nightmare-futuristic world and yet manages to ground it in reality: in delicate, emotional humanity & true if mind-boggling recent American history. Yes, twisted & grim & haunting, a little angry and perhaps a lot odd, but so refreshingly unique & mostly just pure brilliance.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why *you* can relate..., October 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Louse (Hardcover)

...to this particular perversion of humanism.

Trapped in a late-capitalist megalopolis, I am in touch with the feelings of alienation and schizophrenia that so many people seem to lament. In anonymity and depersonalization there seems a comfort and security that appeals to the destitute in all of us. Louse gave me an eye into the mind of the pyramid-builder, the servant so spiritually bankrupt that he vests his emotions in the dreams of a despot in order to achieve a sense of belonging, a justification for his fate. The narrative rolls along just past the fingertips of the protagonist's will, fate constantly upsetting his expectations as in a hardboiled-noir. But this is no nostalgia piece, no literary conceit - this is a well-told story, a vision of how a torturer can manipulate the tortured, regardless of the end or environment. Read in one sitting, it captivates in its honest treatment of soul's bleak horizons.