Steve Aylett, Lint (Thunder's Mouth Press,, 2005)"Lint purports to be the biography of pulp science fiction cult author Jeff Lint, and it's nicely presented as such, complete with bibliography, an index, and numerous illustrations (including quite a few mock-ups of magazine and book covers).
Jeff Lint isn't quite a believable character - he makes Philip K. Dick and Ed Wood look tame by comparison - and his work seems... unlikely. But naturalism isn't what one expects from Aylett, and he does deliver a solid helping of his usual ultra-bizarre creations.
There's a good deal of the familiar world here: Lint does meet and occasionally work with some well-known authors and others. He knew Kerouac and Burroughs, wrote (not very successfully) for Star Trek, and had some responsibility for the movies that became Funny Girl and Patton. But he's also a man who dressed up in women's clothing whenever he delivered a manuscript to his publisher, had an agent who he didn't realise was dead, and wrote a ton of stuff which it is hard to believe anyone could ever have bought or read.
Much of the fun is in tracing this writing-career, Lint churning out pulp science fiction at an amazing rate. Little of it sounds promising, even in summary - though one does get curious what some of these stories might have been like, such as his submission for Maximum Tentacles:
The latter overlapped into what today would be called the "specialty" market, promising "a tentacle in every sentence," and Lint had trouble modifying his story "The True Origin of the Magi" to fill this prescription.
Lint's life is practically as strange and unlikely as his stories, and his real-life interactions with others are also extraordinarily odd.
Peppered throughout are sentences from his books and comments he made, all sounding significant and yet not quite right. An appendix collects some of these Lint-quotations, such as:
Television is light filled with someone else's anxiety.
Or:
Employment is atrophy speeded up.
Aylett's presentation (and humour) isn't so much surreal as it is off-beat - literally, the joke coming in an unexpected place, the twist not the obvious one. The exaggeration and invention is not of the easy, predictable sort, as Aylett doesn't go for the obvious jokes, but rather beyond the absurd (though told with a straight face, the presentation otherwise realistic enough). It makes for a strange reading sensation.
There are some inspired ideas, and the presentation is very good, but much of the book is also hit-or-miss - with such a barrage of projectile-sentences that it can be overwhelming. Aylett's packed style - barely a sentence goes by without an attempt at something clever, funny, or absurd - can be a lot to take, especially when the humour is so warped (and when he seems to be more interested in making the humour warped, rather than focussing on being funny).
Worthwhile - Aylett remains a unique voice, and this book is unlike most anything else out there - but not entirely satisfying."- The Complete Review
"Jeff Lint (1928–1994) shared a birth year and, briefly, a profession with Tezuka. A prodigious if puzzling sci-fi novelist, intimate of the Beats, and occasional TV writer, Lint penned a short-lived comic-book series, The Caterer, featuring the non sequitur–generating, periodically hallucinating, enigmatically violent Jack Marsden. A facsimile of the September '75 issue is available, featuring gnomic catchphrases ("All is equalised"), a detourned Boschian centerfold, and ambivalent fan mail ("Is Jack Marsden a saint? If not, what's the matter with him?"). It's an instant cult item, mysterious, useless, and deep.
Lint, Marsden's creator, is himself a fiction. He's the brainchild of the British SF writer Steve Aylett, whose mock biography Lint tells you more than you need to know—the ungainly apparatus to a great pop joke. Why should the mock biography fall short of the mock comic? The craziness and career of Jeff Lint mirror that of Philip K. Dick (Lint and Dick are both '28 Chicago babies). Critically reviled, mystically inclined ("Went around blessing people—knew it was the most annoying thing he could do," notes a friend), Lint is meant to emblematize the sci-fi writer as simultaneous cultural outcast and culture hero. But this character has already been done better, and toting better names—by Vonnegut (Kilgore Trout, inspired by Theodore Sturgeon), and by Dick himself (Horselover Fat). Myriad details prove tiresome—call it pulp twee—and sometimes capsize the conceit: Would an American writer title a memoir The Man Who Gave Birth to His Arse?
On the other hand, who cares? Printed on cheap paper, Linthas the tactile qualities of the Lintian output, the wobbly energy of a first draft. Getting miffed over this fiction might mean Aylett's doing something right, or as Lint remarks, "Perhaps putting a byline to truth is as pointless as painting a torpedo." Reading a book about failure that is itself a failure delivers some vertiginous satisfaction. But you wouldn't want to do it twice."- Ed Park
"Near the end of his ostensibly fictional biography of science fiction author Jeff Lint, Steve Aylett claims that, "On July 13, 1994, Lint had a near-death experience, followed immediately by death." A quick look at Aylett's own bibliography shows that his first novel was published in 1994. A coincidence? I don′t think so. Reading Lint, one cannot help but be compelled to think that Lint - as described in the book - is himself writing the book. Aylett's biography is every bit as brilliant, as hilarious, as pithy and as psychedelic as anything he describes as being written by Lint. Now, Aylett - as he calls himself - would probably have you believe it's because his subject is so inspiring. Readers who make the journey through Lint's bewitching life and double death will be inclined to think otherwise. After all, Aylett himself tells us that, "Jeff Lint is buried in a Taos graveyard, his headstone bearing the epitaph, 'Don't think of it as a problem, but as a challenge which has defeated you.'"
First appearing as a short story in The Third Alternative, Jeff Lint takes on three and more dimensions in Aylett's entertaining literary voyage. Starting with his birth on July 6, 1928 and ending with his second recorded death on - see above - Aylett follows the journey of this eternal outsider through three generations of writing and culture. He unleashes so many arrows in so many directions, the reader starts to feel a bit like a pincushion, but he at least has the good grace to hit the majority of his satiric targets. And beyond telling more jokes than any sane reader would care to count, Aylett does another very clever thing. The usual journey we encounter in a (supposedly) faux biography has the created character take the form of the ultimate insider. From birth to death, they happen to meet with the high, the mighty and the magnificent, all on a shambling life's journey. What Aylett does here is to invert that journey. Lint is not the ultimate unheralded insider but instead the ultimate unheralded outsider. He's ejected from every club that anyone would reasonably want to be aligned with. His obnoxious and oblivious behavior assures that every time his talent threatens to bring him to the notice of the public at large, he is instead given a kick to his keester and sent on his merry way.
That merry way is made much merrier by virtue of the talent that Aylett/Lint brings to the proceedings. Yes, Lint does hit all the grace notes. We see a page from his rejected script for an episode of Star Trek, and he authors an absolutely mad book on the Kennedy assassination. The book covers are a highlight for this reader, from The Jelly Result to I Blame Ferns. His screenplay for Patton is a scream -- as described by Aylett. One can certainly imagine it was no picnic for those who had to actually read it. But Aylett makes the most of his form, and gives us just the hilarious highlights from the mad mind of Jeff Lint. And make no mistake about it, Lint was certifiable.
Lint's prose, as Aylett tells us, was even trippier than that of his more heralded contemporary, Philip K. Dick. The two lives share many similarities, and readers who enjoy the fiction of Philip K. Dick (and Jeff Lint, of course) will surely find a lot to like in this faux-fictional biography. For this reader, the prose is the real giveaway that Lint and Aylett are one in the same. Yes, we see the work of Lint excerpted regularly, and yes, you understand that one must not be on drugs to write such material. But then Aylett himself will succeed at writing sentences that will surely make the reader's head spin at a speed fast enough to generate artificial gravity. 'Lint' offers some of the most perfectly amazing sentences and paragraphs that are likely to go into your eyes, ever. Aylett/Lint is a clearly a phenomenal talent. While the writer must not do drugs when creating the prose, the reader need not do drugs when reading this prose. Pass the paragraph, man. I need another hit.
Though he covers the worlds of science fiction, Aylett also masters the horror genre when he describes Lint's contribution to daytime children's TV, Catty and the Major. There's a single paragraph here that is extremely surreal, disturbing and will haunt the reader for years to come. If you’re going to read this before bedtime, be careful when you hit this section. It's perfect nightmare material, the quintessential bad acid trip.
No matter how you take it - those who find it a bit strong to read may prefer to smoke the material and thus dilute the effect - Lint is clearly the work of a mind in the advanced stages of both creative genius and insanity. There are so many memorable and repeatable one-liners here that you'll want to take notes. Make sure you do, because this is an experience you deserve, and an experience you deserve to profit from. Or as Jeff Lint puts it, "When the abyss gazes into you, bill it." - Rick Kleffel
"Jack Marsden is a smirking college jock who unleashes verbose diatribes on goats filled with sawdust, lipstick for dogs, and the virtues of bovine udders. He has hallucinations about grizzly bears and dances on all fours when shot at by firearms. He also has a penchant for sitting still for disturbingly long periods of time before embarking on random killing sprees. Naturally he possesses all the elements of a comic-book superhero.
Desperately out of print since 1976 (when the series was cancelled because of issue nine, in which Marsden goes on a killing spree at Disneyland), The Caterer is arguably the strangest comic book ever published. Word bubbles crammed with postmodern rants are paired with action-packed panels illustrated in stereotypical '70s form. Reading it is essentially an exercise in tolerance and bewilderment. But it's this exact obscurity that elevated this little comic to cult status from day one (back issues can be found for upwards of $70 each on eBay). Lucky for us, its creator, Jeff Lint—author of sci-fi cult classics Jelly Result and The Stupid Conversation—saw fit to at least reprint issue three on glossier paper that, thankfully, retains the cheesy '70s ur-color.
"I need a coffeepot the shape of my severed head," Marsden says in a phone call to his college's faculty office. This is the opening panel. Rather than question the demand, the blond secretary lets Marsden continue: "If you take a catfish by the whiskers and pull outward it inflates into a life raft. I know this for a fact, Mister Skeleton."
And he goes on: "I'm afraid I'm serious. Bats only attack sick animals, such as your future. Painting leaves green, which were green, complete, repeated and artificial..."
If you're lost, rest assured, everyone who reads The Caterer is lost. I suggest reading it with friends so you don't feel so alone. The Caterer's surrealism is a bit Lynchian, except with goofier dialogue about air jelly, bulk lard, and human innards made of liquid. Throughout the course of this particular issue, a plot may be unfolding, but it's hard to say what it is. The opening splash page has Marsden repeating "STICK WITH ME!" five times into the phone while his apartment burns. On the next page, he asks a tombstone if it has any "ciggies."
A couple hallucinations occur on top of it all, one involving the aforementioned grizzly bear and another in which Marsden and the bear are plunged into a modified Hieronymous Bosch painting. And for all its silliness, the writer manages to churn out rather striking prose. Before Marsden's final killing spree of innocent townspeople, he tells them, grinning: "People don't mature, they just lose interest." And later: "A cynic is someone who finds out at birth what others find out at death." He even lashes out at his professor: "Sometimes when I look at you, professor, I see an ignorant gray cancer whose one dubious virtue is that it's technically legal."
None of this would be so effective if it didn't look so damn normal. The penciling is painfully average. It's almost as if the panels were drawn first and then the writer filled the word bubbles with the most disconnected sentences he could imagine.
Further compounding The Caterer's weirdness is that author Jeff Lint never lived. Existing halfway between Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout and whoever the hell JT Leroy is, Lint is—if I have this correct—the creation of British sci-fi novelist Steve Aylett. Aylett has written an entire faux-biography of Lint, called Lint. According to Lint, Lint ran with the Beats, was trippier than Philip K. Dick, and had a fan in the young Ann Coulter. A representative sentence: "On July 13, 1994, Lint had a near-death experience, followed immediately by death."
Anyway, The Caterer and Lint are works of art, and they complement each other; you shouldn't read one without the other. Lint is fairly easy to come by—a good bookstore will be able to get it—but for The Caterer, a jaunt to your favorite retailer probably won't do. I suggest visiting www.steveaylett.com, which links to the distributor carrying this masterpiece of insanity. In the short time I've owned it, I've read it more times than I have the finer comics of note. It'll run you about $10, but that's a small price to pay to be in on the joke." - Brian J. Barr
Other Aylett's gems:
"Steve Aylett writes metaphors like no one else in the English language. For instance: "It seemed he had sneezed out an entire brainlobe in early adolescence, and what remained swam in his skull like a lone crouton." Or again: "Leon Wardial was cheerfully ahead of his time-but it was a close call." Or yet again: "We thought our passion would last forever, like styrofoam."
Aylett's prose messes with the reader's mind, on many levels. Cliches are absurdly literalized. Similes and metonymies turn themselves inside out. Seemingly flat statements of fact burst into cascades of mind-boggling associations. Parodies of hard-boiled-detective prose turn commonplace assumptions upside-down. Strange premises ("more murders are committed at 92 degrees fahrenheit than at any other temperature") lead inexorably to ultra-violent conclusions.
All this makes Aylett's novel read like the "Police Beat" column on acid. The book's content perfectly matches its style. The Crime Studio is basically a series of deadpan comic vignettes of bizarre crimes. It's the first (though the last to be published in the United States) of three books by Aylett that are set in Beerlight, an American city of the future whose entire economy seems to be based upon burglaries, assassinations, and random bursts of gunfire.
In the course of The Crime Studio, we meet such characters as Brute Parker, proprietor of the city's all-night gun store, who is as likely as not to kill you with whatever weapon you are trying to buy from him; Billy Panacea, "burgler extraordinaire," who commits his crimes more for aesthetic impact than financial gain; Harpoon Specter, con man and shyster lawyer, who wreaks havoc with his twisted pleas in court; and Henry Blince, the fat Chief of Police, whose ingenious theories, devised to frame innocent people, always involve food found at the scene of the crime, and are foiled only by his inveterate habit of unwittingly eating all the evidence. (All these figures return even more hilariously in the sequel, Slaughtermatic).
There are also numerous episodes turning on disguises, forged and mistaken identities, and odd role inversions. When the denizens of Beerlight aren't planning arcane crimes or impossible jailbreaks, they are usually either drinking themselves into insensibility, or playing insanely elaborate practical jokes on one another.
All in all, this (together with Aylett's other novels) is the most hilarious book I have read in years. But what gets to me most of all about The Crime Studio is still its prose style. The only thing more unsettling than the derangement and delirium depicted in these pages is the cool lucidity, ironic concision, and rigorous, almost abstract logic with which Aylett displays it all to us." - Steven Shaviro
«Steve Aylett's novel Atom is sort of like The Maltese Falcon meets Duck Soup, set in the world of Blade Runner, and narrated with cinematic flair in a prose that is the bastard child of Nabokov, Pynchon, and Oscar Wilde. This might seem like way too many references (not to mention mixed metaphors) with which to burden one short book, but Aylett's dense, hilarious writing deserves no less. Atom, like Aylett's earlier novels Slaughtermatic and The Inflatable Volunteer, is a gorgeously deviant text. It narrates the most bizarre events with a delirious clarity. It sops up the most diverse pieces of cultural flotsam and jetsam, recombining them into startling new shapes. The book's wild inventiveness is modulated by a dryly sarcastic tone. This is mutant fiction for the new millennium.Okay. I guess you could call Atom a parodic, hard-boiled detective novel, set in the cyberfuturistic city of Beerlight, where crime is indistinguishable from performance art and everyone speaks in puns and metaphysical conundrums. The wisecracking "private defective" Taffy Atom, his cooler-than-ice female partner Madison Drowner, and their sidekick Jed Helms, who just happens to be a talking carnivorous fish, are drawn into a web of conspiracy and deceit involving vicious gangsters, demented hit men, corrupt cops, and even the mayor and the president. It all starts when the petty crook Harry Fiasco steals Franz Kafka's cryogenically preserved brain from the facility where it was being kept in storage. Eventually we learn that a shady character called the Candyman, something like Sidney Greenstreet on acid, wants to enlist Kafka's expertise in his project of creating human/insect hybrids. But the insects have their own thoughts in this matter, and so does crime boss Eddie Thermidor. And Chief of Police Henry Blince can't resist getting involved, excited by the prospect of sending a few more hapless suckers to the electric chair. Meanwhile, the president is planning a visit to Beerlight, hoping to draw attention away from accusations that he has had sex with a dog, a lizard, and a squid, among other animals.... Are you still with me?
Atom is actually plotted as tightly and carefully as the most polished detective novel. Yet it swamps the reader with such a deluge of information overload that this is nearly impossible to notice on a first reading. Aylett lets loose with a relentless barrage of cheerfully chaotic detail. The book crackles with an acerbic wit. Blink and you might miss an important plot twist, a brilliant joke, or a crucial metaphor. Such manic exuberance makes a welcome contrast to the minimalist restraint of much recent Anglo-American fiction. All this is not to imply that Aylett's prose is in any sense lush. Rather, it is curt and telegraphic, short words aligned in clear, crisp sentences. Atom is thick with made-up slang (brains are referred to as"squashers"), off-the-wall metaphors (Drowner's gun lab is said to resemble "an alien's bathroom," as if anyone knew what that was like), and a kind of schematic, abstracted tough-guy talk. Many sentences skewer the clichés of hard-boiled fiction: "The city sprawled like roadkill, spreading more with each new pressure." Other times, Aylett's language congeals into pithy, offbeat aphorisms whose tone is ominous, though their precise significance remains obscure: "Organized religion added Jesus to the food groups. The past is killed off by American marksmen."
Atom is as dense with wonderfully strange ideas as it is with brilliantly twisted sentences. For instance, much of the book's humor involves abstruse 'smart' weapons, science-fictional constructs far beyond anything yet imagined in the Pentagon. There's the "loop mine," which puts its victim into a time warp, forced to repeat the same two hours over and over. There are guns whose bullets freeze people into living statues, or force them to embarrass themselves by speaking the truth in public. Best of all, there's the "Syndication bomb." When this device explodes, it converts the scene of impact into "a living Updike novel," devoid of any subtext except for the most banal and boring. Things become so bland and obvious that all feuds, threats, and devious intentions are entirely forgotten. This allows Atom and Drowner to escape from the gangsters who, just a moment before, were about to kill them.
Near the end of Atom, Kafka's brain is transplanted into a new body and restored to consciousness. The tormented author immediately complains that Beerlight is not at all like the America he imagined in his fiction. But of course, society's frustration of our hopes and expectations is one of the things that Kafka's work is all about. Aylett presents a similarly discordant vision of the future. Atom perturbs our categories and habits of thought, no matter which way we take it: as an over-the-top satire, a gleeful rollercoaster ride through a thoroughly postmodern Hell, or a rigorous exercise in the poetics of some other planet than our own.» - Steven Shaviro
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