Emiliano Gonzalez

There's a whole lot wrong with this one. It's essentially a punked-up ripoff of William S. Burroughs, sans all the gay stuff, of course. There's lots of sex, violence, bad girls, tattoo parlors, and bodily fluids, but as a critic whose name escapes me right now has pointed out, the thing about Burroughs shtick is that it can really only be done once. There's only so many ways you can do decadence, which is why most knowingly transgressive lit has a depressing sameness to it. Gonzalez sees himself as part of an avant-garde, so anyone who reads "Neon City Blues" looking for rounded characters or a coherent plot will likely be disappointed. Still, he's quite capable of evoking a kind of lugubrious, nightmarish atmosphere, and the book, when it works at all, works best as a succession of beautifully macabre images. Of course, as might be expected, the author misses the mark about as often as he hits it and frequently steps over the line that separates spooky from cheesy: for an avant-gardist, some his rock and roll fantasies sometimes seem a bit dated.

The second half of my edition of this book is a bit more worthwhile. In it, the author explains why hie was misunderstood by his critics and defends his work. That sounds terrible, and sometimes it is, but, in a way, it's an excuse to write a long, meandering disquisition on the joys and pitfalls of fantasy literature. Funnily enough, Burroughs, who I'd pinpoint as the author's most obvious influence, doesn't come up. Gonzalez doesn't always make his ideas or arguments crystal-clear, and he's not always good about defining his terms, but some of the ideas he presents are undoubtedly interesting. He's read a whole lot of obscure nineteenth-century European fantasy, and while I can't always get behind some of the connections and the judgments he makes, his essay serves as a pretty good reading list for those looking to get into that sort of thing. The essay's shaggy lack-of-structure nicely replicates what it's like to have a big, long conversation with someone who's read deeply in an interesting genre you're not too familiar with after they've downed three or four glasses of wine, and that's not exactly a bad thing. "Neon City Blues" is hardly something I'd recommend to anyone, but it might qualify as an interesting failure.… (més)