 |
Automatic Living
by Paul Outhwaite
(DM
Productions, £8.50 [£7.00 wageless], 442 pages, trade
paperback; published 2000; ISBN 0-9537461-0-0.)
Dysfunctional. Eclectic. Bloody hilarious. Fuzzy. Dedicated. Kurt Vonnegut.
Dense. Extraordinary. Bill Hicks. Fried. Disturbing.
Um, knavish verbosity?
All the terms above will probably have to be applied to Paul Outhwaite's
Automatic Living somewhere in this review (perhaps with the exception
of "knavish verbosity"). This is that kind of book.
Paul Outhwaite has written a book that defies easy description or
categorization -- but not only is it linguistic Teflon it's also surprisingly
good. Why "surprisingly"? Well, read on...
Daniel Manion is a schoolteacher in England, 2020. It's a horrible
place. If you know anything about or have anything to do with socialism,
anti-capitalism demos, protests against GM crops, Reclaim the Streets,
the Liverpool Dockers or any of a hundred other brave and intelligent
groups, then you'll recognize Paul Outhwaite's UK 2020 and hear them
all saying: "I told you so." Ongoing drudgery, the progressively demeaning
effects of the mass media and the drugs he's taking to try and cope
are all slowly but inevitably reducing Daniel to the disturbingly familiar
state of "automatic living" -- existing to consume (in the economic
sense) rather than living to enjoy. Meanwhile, the alien Inuthan's experiments
in raising human consciousness are drawing to a close, with the final
result still in the balance. By contrast, human experiments in brainwashing
are proving remarkably conclusive, and asylum inmates are being "rehabilitated"
by the score. Daniel is clinging onto his sanity through a bright schoolgirl
pupil of his and by helping plan the revolution against those responsible
for this grave new world. And the Second Coming is quietly under way.
Paul Outhwaite has produced a challenging and exciting first novel.
I had my doubts to begin with -- the style will not be to everyone's
taste and is quite demanding, with (for example) sentences often structured
more for effect than traditional meaning -- but don't be put off by
such things. This is an engaging and challenging book. It's been a long
time since I read anything that threw off quite so many ideas on quite
so many barely connected tangents.
OK, let's rephrase all that. To be absolutely honest, the opening
paragraphs read rather naively, and I was worried it might be a struggle
to finish this fairly hefty book. Somehow, however, I found myself drawn
into the madness and misery, rooting for Daniel's idealism and hope
against the overwhelming forces of stupidity and greed that seem to
be prevailing everywhere. Automatic Living is a denial of the
doctrine that human existence has no meaning beyond provoking bleeps
at cash registers, and it engages against any conscious judgement. I'm
still not sure if Paul Outhwaite has a quite remarkable talent or was
very, very lucky to achieve this effect. Hopefully it's the former.
The kaleidoscopic story boils along at an unstoppable pace: aliens
that resemble Vonnegut's better comic creations, mad scientists, mad
nobodies, thuggish police, the welcoming bosom of Daniel's friends --
you never know what's going to happen next, even (perhaps especially)
in the retold second half of the book.
Not all of Automatic Living at first glance seems to combine
into a coherent whole very easily, but, rather like a high-speed trip
through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, it all somehow makes a demented
sense if you just go with it and come out the other end. You may not
win the factory, but you may realize that you don't need to.
Oh, and Martin Millar, that's who else this book reminds me of. Although
Outhwaite doesn't employ Millar's brilliant monotone style of writing,
and is too fired up with passion to write a book that addresses his
concerns other than head-on, Automatic Living appears to be on
the same level as the people it writes about -- it isn't ironically
distanced, commenting safely from a middle-class eyrie; it seems as
though it is there, with the people it is writing about. That,
I think, is why it never becomes tired or boring -- or, worse, patronizing.
Don't be surprised if, when you put your copy of Automatic Living
on the shelf between Julian Barnes and Martin Amis, you wake up the
next day to find the Barnes and Amis books mysteriously shredded and
soiled on the floor. That'd be Outhwaite's creation simply doing its
job!
Automatic Living
is available from: DM Productions PO Box 83 Coulby Newham Middlesbrough
TS8 0FX UK It costs £8.50 (£7.00 unwaged) payable to DM PRODUCTIONS.
Or go to the DM
Production s website (but watch out - for an avowedly revolutionary
site there are an awful lot of annoying pop-up ads!).
Review by Stuart Carter
www.stupc.co.uk
Elsewhere in infinity
plus:
|
|
