Customer Reviews

Louse

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

...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.

Louse reads like Don Delillo, James Ellroy, David Foster Wallace and Terry Gilliam all wrote a novel together--and it worked absolutely perfectly, allowing the best parts of each of them to shine. Louse is based loosely on the last days of Howard Hughes, when the man has completely lost himself to his obsession with hygiene and mania for absolute power, locked himself in the penthouse of his own casino and surrounded himself with troops of supposedly absolutely loyal servants. Louse is the most perfect combination of maverick originality, obvious intelligence, and entertaining storytelling in a novel in a long, long time.

A strange, Kafkaesque first novel, "Louse," portrays the proscribed existence of Herman Q. Louse, indentured valet to the despotic, Howard Hughes-like mogul, Herbert "Poppy" Blackwell. Louse cannot remember a time before; his world is defined by the drugged, antiseptic, rule-bound confines of Poppy's "Resort Town of G."

Poppy is a repellent bony pile of flesh in a bed. "His skin is like moth-eaten velvet and shimmers like the phosphorescence of a crashed wave. I fear that a slip of the finger will puncture or bruise its cloudy sheen." His sterile bedroom, a self-imposed prison, is sealed against bugs, bacteria and dirt. Louse's duties are rigidly ritualistic.

Outside Poppy's room, surveillance cameras monitor behavior, even in the cell-like bedrooms (complete with a spy hole for watching your neighbor). Transgressions, "acts of free will" trigger fines, for, it appears, the "Resort's" inhabitants are gambling debtors, confined to work off their casino losses. Whispers of scandal and conspiracy abound; Louse tries to ignore them, fearing at worst a trap, at best, pointless rumormongering, an activity which seems to supply the only recreation and social contact.

Organized in short chapters, Louse's bewildered narration is interspersed with official documents defining the "Resort's" organization and rules. The reader understands no better than Louse what is real. Cracks begin to appear in the stultifying routine. Unexpected deviations startle and confuse. Dragged into the unknown conspiracy, Louse fears a trap, a test. But images of an outside existence begin flashing in his head. " `I must be ready for my pharmaceutical, Ms. Lonesome,' I say with my teeth clenched."

The walls of Resort G appear to be crumbling.

Darkly humorous, Grand's deadpan, paranoid delivery combined with the officialese of bizarre documents draws the reader into a surrealistic, claustrophobic world.

Part quasi-science fiction, part social satire, the one thing that can be said about David Grand's "Louse" is that it pays homage to Orwell's "1984" in its description of a hermetically sealed corporate world, ostensibly a gambling casino. The workers, who have been brainwashed to forget their past lives, must closely obey certain arbitrary rules, or get punished, or even tortured. The main character, Louse (sort of like the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in "Remains of the Day"), who occasionally has glimpses of his former life, serves as a cog in a corporate nightmare as the head honcho's right hand man and narcotic administer. He can hardly comprehend the world he has become a part of, nor does he try very hard to. At one point, a conspiracy brews, but neither Louse nor the reader can figure out who exactly is behind it, nor whether it actually succeeds.

As an Orwellian version of corporate America, "Louse" is only partially successful. Although the book was a fairly intense read, it doesn't hold a candle to the much better "1984," and, frankly, I was relieved when I finished. Still, I would like to see what David Grand writes next; he obviously has a talent for presenting ideas in an unusual manner.

This book doesn't describe alienation - it is alienation. Fromcharacters who become familiar and yet are still nondescript to a plotthat unfolds but doesn't involve, reading Louse is like watching life go by from your window. If you want to read a better book in a similar vein, read The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford, which manages to both draw compelling characters and make a wide ranging commentary on modern life.

Finally there is a book with vision, a book that stands out among the barrage of new writers that continue to sound alike, look alike. It is like a modern combination of Gogol and Kafka,and yet it is entirely new. The story is eerily funny, and the view as a whole is intelligent, brilliant. Grand is an author to watch, as he will become one of this genertions major writers.

A novel dense with precise language, dark comedy, chilling atmosphere, and brimming with ideas, Louse dares create the world where the individual is sacrificed for the good of the coporation, where identity is the currency for survival. Not necessarily original themes, but Grand's unique and twisted handling of them makes Louse as addictive a novel I have read in a very long time.

Some books are earthshattering. Some change people's lives. And some are just ink on paper, not actually formulating into an engaging story. "Louse," unfortunately, is one of the third kinds of books. Failing to evoke anything at all, it ends up being as sterile and dull as the penthouse.

Herbert Horatio Blackwell is a reclusive, eccentric mogul who hides away from the world (and germs) in a carefully sterilized penthouse atop a casino. He employs and controls compulsive gamblers, who pay off their debts by sacrificing their long-term memories and becoming his devoted slaves. One of these is his manservant Herman Louse.

In the detached little community of G, Louse encounters a subversive element. This is a problem, since he has been brainwashed into subservience. But as he tries to ignore the conspiracy brewing around him, he inadvertantly gets drawn into it.

"Louse" does pretty well in concept, with its bizarre otherworldly setting, strange characters and robotic civilization. It's hard to tell if this surreal setting is even in our world. And the concept of a "king" who controls people is always a winner, especially if there's a twist. In concept, at least, David Grand cannot be faulted.

The problem with "Louse"? Unlike Kafka, it fails to evoke any emotional response at all. Kafka could evoke horror, misery and despair. Grand can't do that. It's arguable that this is deliberate, a reflection of the sterile life that Louse and the others are leading, but there's no emotion in scenes like Louse's flashbacks, or near the end. Everything is painfully clinical and detached, even when some kind of vividity is called for.

The dialogue is almost as bad. The characters tend to exchange short, random sentences that sound like Hemingway on acid. The descriptions are uneven and minimal, and most of the supporting characters have only a few words to describe them physically or mentally. This is not so bad, because virtually all of them speak and seem to think alike.

Blackwell is hard to take seriously, since he's so obviously a copy of Howard Hughes (the lives of his parents, his movies, planes, and phobia about bacteria). Louse isn't a particularly engaging narrator -- one of the problems with a narrator who feels nothing is that the reader then feels nothing. Supporting characters are similarly two-dimensional.

"Louse" has an unengaging title and an unexciting storyline. Not recommended for those who like even a spark of inspiration in their book reading.