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WILL@epicqwest.com: A Medicated Memoir

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"Quirky" and "edgy" are hard things to write. And in Tom Grimes's funny, smart novel "WILL@epicqwest.com," the edgy and smart are very much present. Only here, they're mixed with chemically-augmented satire -- an intoxicating mix.

Will is the 21st-century lost-long twin of Holden Caulfield: a depressed loser college student with a weird family, who also has enough medication in his body to open his own pharmacy. He's wrapped up in his own bizarre thoughts and lets schoolwork go to the wayside. Oh yes -- he has a quest to go on (get it? epicqwest.com?).

I.S. (Information Sickness) is "a virus that makes people think, and occasionally laugh, too much," and kills them when it overloads their minds. Our anti-hero is out to stop the malevolent Dr. Bones and his sexy henchwoman, and save everyone from overload and imminent death. To save humankind (or something like that, Will joins forces with his talkative computer Spunk to stop Dr. Bones before it's too late.

"Wacky" is not usually a good word to associate with a satirical novel. But "WILL@epicqwest.com" has a certain sense of wackiness that keeps it from being heavy-handed. Grimes takes pokes at postmodern civilization: at sex, philosophy, computers, love, parents, capitalism, learning and drugs to keep us happy -- and it's all through the jaded eyes of a heavily medicated college student. It's either hysterically funny, or insanely scary.

Most cool genre-bending authors trip over their own efforts to be edgy and cool. Grimes doesn't. While peppering the story with pop culture references, he excels in his writing -- at some times it seems like a straighforward first-person story. At other times, all those drugs in Will's system twist his viewpoint a little bit. The dialogue is amazing, especially during scenes where the characters are having major "moments" ("I loved you even before I saw you airbrushed onto a haystack"). Even the chapter titles are called things like "Part Two, Chapter Two: In Which I Sate the Reader's Need for Narrative Drive, or Suffer the Wrath of the Marketplace."

Anti-hero Will is a witty, strange protagonist with unusual priorities. It's hard to summarize a guy whose brain takes up an entire book, and seems to spill over the edges. He's weird, and it works. And Spunk, the Pancho to Will's Don Quixote, is what makes the quest a winner, with his constant opinions and input. (Think C3-PO, but much less subserviant)

Sardonic and edgy, this is a must-read (especially for cynical students). Tom Grimes' wry fourth novel "WILL@epicqwest.com" is a hyperactive satire with a manic edge. Better than Prozac.

In the titular character of this romp, Grimes has created a protagonist who can't decide whether to unify the polarizing forces within him or let them pull him apart.

Nineteen-year-old Will (as with so many who roam the Internet, no last name provided) is fantastical, yet all-too believable. He's entirely at the mercy of his own raging emotions and confused as to which to use productively and which to subdue with medication. He asks for purpose from a culture of cheap vanities and gross commodities. He is a student habitually absent from class. His family is archetypically dysfunctional - harpy for mother, jailbird for father - yet succoring. Will is, in short, an insightful post-adolescent who could either turn out to be a gag writer for Conan O'Brien or the next Noam Chomsky.

As the story (or "quest") begins, young Will has uncovered a plot by an evil scientist with an Elvis fixation, a supermodel girlfriend and tenure: Dr. Bones - to infect humankind with Information Sickness (IS) via ubiquitously distributed fat-free food substitutes. His sidekick in his adventure is his laptop, named "Spunk," whose various programming functions enable it to operate as everything from buddy to Greek chorus throughout. Will may know who is responsible for IS, but he does not know if a cure exists or can be developed in time. Supporting stock characters - trigger-happy yokels, beautiful but shallow coeds, sentimental slackers, political overachievers, academic narcissists, venture capitalists, intellectual property attorneys - jack-in-the-box out of other chapters but offer little help as Will tries to break out of his chemically induced state into choices that will restore himself and his world to balance.

Which is to say that, after all, there is a serious cast to the entertainment. IS not only leaves its victims with a sense of "trivialized omniscience" - knowing everything, but knowing, too, that "everything" has no significance - but it also kills. Grimes is addressing here the difficulty of the satirical enterprise. When life seems to have fulfilled the prophecies of such satires as John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, what's a humorist to do?

WILL@epicqwest.com is a wild (and wildly literate) entertainment that works both as a satire of our product-obsessed culture and a coming-of-age story (set in our marketing-intensive, Prozac-popping age of pseudo-enlightenment). You'll want to dip into this book, again and again, laughing till you cry all the way.

Although I think it is a little over the top to compare this "novel" (actually it reads more like an unformated script for the next Mike Meyers flick) to "a daring cross between Voltaire's Candide and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove" as the cover blurb does, I do think Tom Grimes is one very funny dude. What this "epic quest" really reminds me of is Don Quixote de la Mancha as updated by Saturday Night Live.

Will, the "anti-hero" of this "medicated memoir" is a freshman at a "by the side of the Interstate" college near a polluted bay whose psychopharmacologist(s) have him on Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, etc. so that he might cope with the vicissitudes of postmodern life. Peering through the haze he discovers a new viral infection set loose on the world by "the evil Dr. Bones," a disease he calls "Information Sickness." Too much meaningless information apparently kills, and so Will begins a Quixotic quest to save humanity from information overload. Along the way he has kinky and funny carnal knowledge of two babes and what might be called wet noodle knowledge of a third, respectively, Crystal Goodlay (body-beautiful assistant to the evil Dr. B.), ABD Chandra (belly dancer and Indian chef extraordinaire), and Naomi (fellow virology student and luscious centerfold spread).

So much for the plot premise, which doesn't matter. What Tom Grimes is really up to here is a mass satirical attack on all things postmodern, corporate, governmental, intellectual, collegiate, therapeutic, literary, sexual, informational, and a whole lot more. The really insidious thing about Grimes is that not only is he belly-laugh funny, he is well-read. The allusions and references to things scientific and literary actually wage war with allusions and references to the pop culture in this twisted tale of all things overloaded. Grimes is conversant with complexity theory, modern philosophy, stock market dynamics, information theory, cosmology, as well as testosterone and cyberspace. In reading something that would appeal to, say, the viewers of American Pie, one can simultaneously smirk with satisfaction at knowing the intelligentsia-droppings scattered throughout. This is no dumbed-down cartoon network pseudo-novel--well, it's a pseudo-novel, but one with Film Potential.

What Grimes should be doing with his talent for wordsmithing and laugh out loud satirical thrusts is writing teen exploitation scripts for Tristar or HBO while moonlighting for Saturday Night Live. Come to think of it, he probably is.

Some novels depend rather more on characterization than do others. In the novel of ideas, the characters often exist as mouthpieces for various philosophical positions; while the writer may have taken the trouble to describe them and give them diverse individual attributes, they often have little real life outside of their specific argumentative role in the novel. Some people may have suggested this concerning Tom Grimes' latest novel posted here, but I disagree.

In many ways, WILL@epicqwest.com is a novel of ideas, yes. But it is MORE than that. The level and efficiency of the writing and humor, which are quite sophisticated, provide a compelling drive to the book. Is it true that comedy creates its own energy? Yes. And that is certainly evident here. Because the book has a furious comic energy. This is truly a FUNNY book. And for no reason other than that would I recommend it. All that rest? Consider it all icing on the cake.

Pick up a copy of WILL@epicqwest.com for a good belly laugh and I'll tell you this: You won't regret it. It's like the best of Terry Southern meets the best of Woody Allen meets the best of the Marx. Brothers. This book is a CLASSIC!

Along with this novel, I'd like to recommend Tom Grimes' other wonderful novels, City Of God and A Stone of the Heart -- on sale at Amazon. For more, check out -----------------> http://www.ludlowpress.com/will/tom_grimes.htm

If you love to laugh, then -- boy -- do I have a book for you! WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is quite simply one of the most hilarious novels (er, excuse me, "memoirs") I've read in a long time. The back cover mentions Candide and Dr. Stangelove, but the Marx Brothers and Monty Python's Flying Circus also come to mind. This is top-flight satire that's freewheeling and wild -- not to mention, incredibly smart. WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is written in the form of website entries (like an online diary); the website is of course the book's title (which, if you do a web search on WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is also an actual website). The "epic" adventures of the perennial screw-up/protagonist "Will" -- an "over-medicated" college freshman -- involves a hallucinatory "quest" to slay an evil scientist responsible for the creation of a deadly virus called IS ("Information Sickness"), a virus that kills anyone it comes in contact with via a kind of information overload...kind of like what one experiences on the "misinformation superhighway" of the internet (50 million websites and not a single straight answer to anything). Like a junior Don Quixote (perhaps no less self-deluded), hapless Will sets off with a sidekick, his self-aware, chatterbox laptop named "Spunk," who serves a guide and mentor one moment and foil and comic relief the next. Problem is: does the virus IS -- and the evil scientist -- even exist? Or is all this -- these extraordinary misadventures -- simply a side effect of the massive Prozac dosage our hero has been prescribed? Chapters open within chapters, like trapdoors, and the hero proceeds on his adventure often with the self-consciousness of a dreamer who is fully aware he is in a dream: nothing is real, while all seeming somehow hyper real. This self-awareness parodies post-post modern fiction or what's often called "meta-fiction:" but for me it's just unpredictably hilarious and zany. Truly this is one of best-informed, most witty novels I've read in a very long time. And the glowing praise for this book by authors like Tim O'Brien, Dennis Johnson, and Thom Jones -- as well as its underground reputation -- doesn't surprise me at all. A comic tour de force! Don't miss out!

The inside front cover and back cover of this book have comments which have tried and failed to convey the humor, wit and wisdom of the work. The writer is compared to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon. The book is described as a cross between Voltaire's Candide and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Not exactly. In fact, there is no writer to whom anyone might accurately compare the style of Tom Grimes.

Nevertheless, I will give it my best shot, but I also will fail. I would have to say that the book reads similarly to what would obtain if Dave Barry were explaining at length to Honore de Balzac what in the hell the phrase "post-modernism" means in a purely erotic context. As in, and I quote:

"Authorities now suspect that having a sense of humor might make some victims susceptible to the virus [The author is seeking the cause of Information Sickness virus]. One popular culture professor and the author of the self published Just Kidding: Jokes, Rib-Ticklers and Bathroom Humor: Toward a Hermeneutics of Laughing; or, the Guffaw as Simulacral Paradigm in Laugh Track Culture, told staff reporters at the Prometheus, `Laughter is a trait of the fin de siecle periods. I mean you don't see people cracking jokes in the Iliad. Revolutionaries tend not to subscribe to the someday-this-will-all-seem-funny theory either; ask Robespierre.'"

Yes, the book has a plot, and subplots. The narrative is linear enough to be enjoyed as a tale. The character and his life are probably not quite like you and yours, but, oddly enough, there are plenty of similarities if you have ever taken a course in college and embarked on a quest (and who among us has not?). The campaign speech made by the candidate for President alone is worth the price of the book. Actually, it's a very funny book. Give it a try. If it doesn't make you laugh, you're grounded.

BOOKSTORE OWNER, DARK HORSE BOOKS, Chicago, IL.:

If I had to write a one-word review for this wacky book, it would be this: "Funny!" That's exactly what this novel was to me. The unlikely protagonist of this book is a perpetual (but lovable) screw-up who, due to an over prescription of Prozac ("plus a little Lithium") finds himself flunking right out of College and, what's worse it seems, losing touch with reality. (Or is he? We never really know.) Somewhere along the way, the main character, Will (the title of the book refers to his diary, which is also a website), develops the notion of a sinister plot: some "mad scientist" who has developed the ultimate potentially threatening Weapon of Mass Destruction: a "virus," crossing cyberspace and real-life boundaries. This virus is called "I.S." or as it's otherwise known, "Information Sickness."

I.S. -- like the Monty Python skit that seems to have inspired the idea "The Funniest Joke in the World" (check out --http://www.pion.ch/Fun/funniest.html) -- seems to kill anyone it comes in contact with, allowing the infected party to KNOW ALL --thereby knowing nothing. (Information overload that borders on anti-information overload, which thus cancels each other out? You betcha'!)

Whether this virus, or this mad doctor, or ultimately this entire adventure or "quest" exists is open to question. And this idea is what the author, Tom Grimes, plays with: an adventure in which the protagonist or hero is self-aware, or due to drugs, cognizant of the many levels of "reality" operating all at once.
This may sound very complicated, but take my word for it, it's all quite entertaining, very simply written, and hilarious. WILL@epicqw... whatever -- let's just call it "WILL" -- is a madcap frolic, truly a hilarious novel, which requires an open mind and the ability to laugh.

There's a fierce intelligence behind the book, true, but never one that overrides the aim of the book -- which in many ways is simply to entertain. In some ways, it's quite goofy, (yes, like a Mike Myers/Austin Powers flick) -- but always, always entertaining. Sorry I couldn't be more negative!

In the titular character of this romp, Grimes has created a protagonist who can't decide whether to unify the polarizing forces within him or let them pull him apart.

Nineteen-year-old Will (as with so many who roam the Internet, no last name provided) is fantastical, yet all-too believable. He's entirely at the mercy of his own raging emotions and confused as to which to use productively and which to subdue with medication. He asks for purpose from a culture of cheap vanities and gross commodities. He is a student habitually absent from class. His family is archetypically dysfunctional - harpy for mother, jailbird for father - yet succoring. Will is, in short, an insightful post-adolescent who could either turn out to be a gag writer for Conan O'Brien or the next Noam Chomsky.

As the story (or "quest") begins, young Will has uncovered a plot by an evil scientist with an Elvis fixation, a supermodel girlfriend and tenure: Dr. Bones - to infect humankind with Information Sickness (IS) via ubiquitously distributed fat-free food substitutes. His sidekick in his adventure is his laptop, named "Spunk," whose various programming functions enable it to operate as everything from buddy to Greek chorus throughout. Will may know who is responsible for IS, but he does not know if a cure exists or can be developed in time. Supporting stock characters - trigger-happy yokels, beautiful but shallow coeds, sentimental slackers, political overachievers, academic narcissists, venture capitalists, intellectual property attorneys - jack-in-the-box out of other chapters but offer little help as Will tries to break out of his chemically induced state into choices that will restore himself and his world to balance.

Which is to say that, after all, there is a serious cast to the entertainment. IS not only leaves its victims with a sense of "trivialized omniscience" - knowing everything, but knowing, too, that "everything" has no significance - but it also kills. Grimes is addressing here the difficulty of the satirical enterprise. When life seems to have fulfilled the prophecies of such satires as John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, what's a humorist to do?

WILL@epicqwest.com is a wild (and wildly literate) entertainment that works both as a satire of our product-obsessed culture and a coming-of-age story (set in our marketing-intensive, Prozac-popping age of pseudo-enlightenment). You'll want to dip into this book, again and again. Don't miss the opportunity to grab a copy!

If you love to laugh, then -- boy -- do I have a book for you! WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is quite simply one of the most hilarious novels (er, excuse me, "memoirs") I've read in a long time. The back cover mentions Candide and Dr. Stangelove, but the Marx Brothers and Monty Python's Flying Circus also come to mind. This is top-flight satire that's freewheeling and wild -- not to mention, incredibly smart. WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is written in the form of website entries (like an online diary); the website is of course the book's title (which, if you do a web search on WILL@EPICQWEST.COM is also an actual website). The "epic" adventures of the perennial screw-up/protagonist "Will" -- an "over-medicated" college freshman -- involves a hallucinatory "quest" to slay an evil scientist responsible for the creation of a deadly virus called IS ("Information Sickness"), a virus that kills anyone it comes in contact with via a kind of information overload...kind of like what one experiences on the "misinformation superhighway" of the internet (50 million websites and not a single straight answer to anything). Like a junior Don Quixote (perhaps no less self-deluded), hapless Will sets off with a sidekick, his self-aware, chatterbox laptop named "Spunk," who serves a guide and mentor one moment and foil and comic relief the next. Problem is: does the virus IS -- and the evil scientist -- even exist? Or is all this -- these extraordinary misadventures -- simply a side effect of the massive Prozac dosage our hero has been prescribed? Chapters open within chapters, like trapdoors, and the hero proceeds on his adventure often with the self-consciousness of a dreamer who is fully aware he is in a dream: nothing is real, while all seeming somehow hyper real. This self-awareness parodies post-post modern fiction or what's often called "meta-fiction:" but for me it's just unpredictably hilarious and zany. Truly this is one of best-informed, most witty novels I've read in a very long time. And the glowing praise for this book by authors like Tim O'Brien, Dennis Johnson, and Thom Jones -- as well as its underground reputation -- doesn't surprise me at all. A comic tour de force! Don't miss out!

Let me say this: WILL@epicqwest.com is one funny book. It's about a flunking college freshman, depressed by life in general, who is prescribed an assortment of legal and popular mood-enhancing medications. This cocktail of happy pills apparently has a side effect, which is to distort the protagonist's sense of reality, perhaps even his sanity -- or so we can only assume. Don Quixote addled brain comes to mind: it's in that vein - but since this narrative is told from the first person point-of-view, we never really know for sure how reliable the protagonist is (even if he's schizophrenic!).

WILL@epicqwest.com's main adventure is as follows:

Will, the protagonist, seems to believe that a deadly virus called Information Sickness or "IS" has been introduced into society via some kind of fat-free food substitute created by a kooky evil scientist parody named "Dr. Bones." Again all of this could be part of his drug-induced delusional state, but we are never quite sure; as stated above, the narrator is somewhat unreliable - and we are not quite sure what to believe. In reading WILL@epicqwest.com, I'm reminded a bit of Vonnegut, DeLillo and Heller (in his Catch 22 phase); this book is madcap satire, consistently intelligent and tightly written -- and it targets University life, consumerism, corporate marketing...virtually everything -- the absurdity of modern (or post modern or post post modern [-- more self-mockery]) life.

Will's "quest" is told in short, lively chapters with sardonic introductions that recall or skew those appearing in Don Quixote and other traditional "quest" adventures. Will's sidekick is a motor mouth laptop affectionately named "Spunk" -- appropriate in light of the internet's main industry and attraction (at least among young males): porn. The intelligent, freewheeling chatter spewed by "Spunk" may be another side effect of the concoction of drugs in Will's brain, again we don't know; regardless, the sidekick serves the purpose of providing exposition and as well as being an entertaining foil.

This is one frenetic, over-the-top funny novel; however the references -- and the irony -- may not be understood or appreciated by a pre-adolescent comic book mentality predominantly used to fart jokes and mind-numbingly obvious sitcoms like Married with Children. It strives for something more. Which is not say that WILL@epicqwest.com is above quirky slapstick comedy; it's not: and this is part of its appeal, too. But the novel references other books: The Tin Drum, Don Quixote, Catcher in the Rye, White Noise, Candide -- as well as employing elements of metafiction and narrative self-mockery, making fun of conventional and yes, cliché, narrative storytelling techniques (which is particularly fun if you also happen to be a writer yourself and conscious of such things). For other readers, there is plenty of humor and madcap lunacy; the book works on many levels. Grimes is truly an excellent writer. And some of the dialogue is nothing less than brilliant. But try it for yourself! Check out WILL@epicqwest.com: a medicated memoir. I also recommend White Noise by DeLillo and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, if you haven't read those already.