Tonguing the Zeitgeist by Lance Olsen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Write Moves

I thought this might have been an ideal introduction to Lance Olsen's fiction before embarking on his longer and more ambitious works.

It's a short, three minute rock 'n' roll novel set in the near future, and I love both rock music and the future. I want to be around for both.

Having finished it, I am a bit ambivalent about reading later novels, unless I can be satisfied that he has addressed some of the flaws in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist".

Beautiful Mutants

This was his second novel, so you can't blame the flaws on the inexperience of a first effort.

Olsen has all the writing chops any author could want, he writes with vitality, his descriptions are vivid, the atmosphere is alive, it's just that the characters are two dimensional, perhaps a little too cybernetic, not human enough.

How can this possibly happen, if your ensemble has embraced androgyny, auto-disfigurement, cacophony, buggerdom, anarchic rebellion, schizophrenia, cruelty, electronic pharmaceuticals and anti-corporate sentiments?

For all the pyrotechnics, the novel is just too emotionally static. It's as if the only thing that moves in the narrative is our eyes, our minds, as we come to some understanding, on our own, of what we have just witnessed.

Everything, everybody is paraded or wheeled out in front of us, until finally we have an ah ha moment, when it all comes together, but with too little impact.

The overall impression is "Is that all there is? Please, sir, can I have some more?"

The Faustian Compact

I could let Olsen off the hook, on the basis that this is his point: that we live in an era of manufactured entertainment, stardom and fame:

"You," Lazar said. "You see, rock music is, well, all rocked out."

"But de idea of fads, mon, dey live forever."

So the machine, in pursuit of the next big thing, sucks meaning and vitality out of artist and audience alike.

Viva Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

For all its pessimism, this message might actually be correct.

If so, no character in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist" rebels or fights it, at least not successfully. We are almost complicit in our own fate.

There are no more old-fashioned heroes any more, only latter day idols and icons.

There is a fatalism at work here, we are all being pulled down the slippery slide or sucked into the quicksand of a dehumanised William Gibson-type future. And then we die, and the gravy train moves on without us.

However, I didn't come here to experience the Wallacian "Entertainment" of "Infinite Jest", as vibrant and alluring as it might be. I want to escape from the experience.

No Zeitgeist Insight

I found it interesting that everybody tries hard, perhaps too hard, to "tongue the Zeitgeist".

Initially, my concern was that the novel was all foreplay and no fornication. It's a hopped up, sexed up, biotech world, the future, according to Olsen.

For some reason, I inferred the aim might have been to fuck the Zeitgeist, not just tongue it. Then I realised it's the characters, we, who have been fucked...by the Zeitgeist.

So this is why Olsen might have stopped at "tonguing". We didn't get to second base when we had bat in hand.

Hysterically Blue-Tongued

This plight reminded me of my childhood, in a metaphorical way.

Have you ever sucked on a nice ice block and you realised that you're tongue has stuck like glue to the ice?  Suddenly, you run urgently to a tap, so you can get some water to part tongue and ice. Everybody else thinks it's hilarious, but the pleasure of the experience is vastly diminished for you.

It's ironic, perhaps, that this is exactly how I reacted to the novel.

For all the pain, though, I just couldn't hold my tongue. I had to tell someone. You.


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