 |
|
|
| This month features Ken Hollings' Destroy All Monsters, Marion Boyars, 071453062X |
In the dusty aftermath of September 11th, writers have shown themselves to be some of the worst victims of taking-it-all-too-personally syndrome. Ken Hollings, as a rarity among them, would have a genuine right to say he saw it, or some of it, coming.
Published the very week of the attacks on America, Destroy all Monsters is genuinely, spookily prescient. As a novel, it is haunted by a host of literary ghosts: Gibson, Burroughs, De DeLillo, Ballard; as a progress report on Planet Earth, it seems to have time-slipped onto the front pages.
The world has acquired quite a few new monsters, recently, and at least some of the world is set on destroying them all.
In many ways, Destroy all Monsters is a conservative, synoptic novel. A great many 'cult' signifiers are present and correct: Gojira movies, serial killers, Elvis Presley (in reanimated form), the President of the USA.
Yet here they are run through, one on top of the other, one becoming the other, with incredible confidence and speed: we bat around the planet, each section rarely longer than two pages: we are in Burger King in Washington, a Tokyo night-club, a theatre in Memphis, in something approximating to cyberspace. Occasionally we are bemused, but most of the time we know only too well where we are and what's going on there.
The writing style is clean and clear. Clip after clip of '80s / '90s riffs are shot off: 'The Chanel bag was already sending out all the right signals: disposable income coupled with an uncompromising flair for the obvious.'
We read with techno-nostalgia, once again together in electric dreams: 'A jet fighter takes off from the rolling deck of an American aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. The pilot's face is hidden beneath a dark visor that reflects nothing but the glowing instrument panel in front of him. Lights flash, reading out the contours of enemy air space, as the plane skims low over the pollution-crowded sea...'
The novel opens, 'It is Day 500 of Operation Desert Storm, and everything is going according to plan.'
Hollings' thesis, explicit throughout, is that the 21st century started here: the smart bombs wised us up. 'Desert Storm gave shape and impetus to a whole new decade.'
Much of the writing feels, now, this week, historical. 'The military were first attracted to the aesthetics of destruction without casualties as a result of watching old monster movies... Whole city blocks were demolished but no-one ever died in them. Urban space itself was so carefully vectored and controlled in these films that it was possible to buy a newspaper in one part of Tokyo and read front-page accounts of the terrible destruction being wrought by giant reptiles in another without giving it a second thought.' But Godzilla has left the building; Godzilla will not be welcome back.
The monsters of the title provide the engine of the plot. On Earthquake Island a man known to us only as The Scientist has been keeping Micronosaur (the Molecule Monster), Eiga (the Dream Monster), Manta (the Giant Reptile Wing) and Gravaton (the Deep Monster) under control. But The President wants to harness their powers, to turn them into something useful, to use them militarily...'The balance of terror. That just about summed the whole thing up. Time to move on, he thought. Just like it was the fifties all over again.'
Back to the future, indeed.
|
Author interviews
