The Infernal: A Novel

by Mark Doten

A fierce, searing response to the chaos of the war on terror—an utterly original and blackly comic debut

In the early years of the Iraq War, a severely burned boy appears on a remote rock formation in the Akkad Valley. A shadowy, powerful group within the U.S. government Who is he? Where did he come from? And, crucially, what does he know? In pursuit of that information, an interrogator is summoned from his prison cell, and a hideous and forgotten apparatus of torture, which extracts "perfect confessions," is retrieved from the vaults. Over the course of four days, a cavalcade of voices rises up from the Akkad boy, each one striving to tell his or her own story. Some of these voices are Osama bin Laden, L. Paul Bremer, Condoleezza Rice, Mark Zuckerberg. Others are less so. But each one has a role in the world shaped by the war on terror. Each wants to tell This is the world as it exists in our innermost selves. This is what has been and what might be. This is The Infernal .

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Novels, Horror, War, Contemporary, Science Fiction

416 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 17, 2015

About the author

Mark Doten was born in Minnesota in 1978. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, The Believer, and New York magazine.

He wrote the libretto for The Source, a work of musical theater about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, with music by Ted Hearne, which had its world premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival in October 2014, and was named one of the best classical vocal pieces of the year by The New York Times.

He attended Macalester College and Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony.

The literary fiction editor at Soho Press, he lives in Brooklyn.

His first novel, The Infernal, was published by Graywolf Press in February 2015.

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is not often that I throw in the towel, but this has to be the most reader-unfriendly book I have ever encountered. I suspect, however, that there will be as many people giving this a rapturous five stars (maybe to be seen as to ‘get it’ or to be ‘in’, as with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, one of the most talked-about but least-read books ever) as there are poor saps like me who wondered what the fuck was going on.

Make no mistake about it, I read a lot of genre fiction, and am open to literary experimentation. Doten does make a fascinating statement in how far you can go to disrupt textual conventions – the text itself is presented as a corrupt transcription, with gibberish coding breaking up sentences and paragraphs – but he pushes the envelope to rupture point.

You can kind of get into the flow of things once you get something of a handle of the meta structure of the novel, which is a boy in a desert speaking in tongues, from Osama bin Laden to Condeleeza Rice to (yours truly) Mark Doten.

But, weirdly enough, this quickly becomes very tedious and numbing. I particularly disliked the Osama bin Laden sections, where there is a very bizarre and very ugly strand of anti-semitism. I suppose ultimately this all has to tie up with the Israel/US, East/West split, as the title The Inferno references Dante.

This (kind of ) reminded of The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, where a realist Iraq War section is sandwiched in-between some high-fantasy sections. Doten’s aim here is far more radical: to represent the entire War on Terror as some kind of Grand Guignol panopticon.

However, you are even unsure of any potential meaning here whatsoever, as meaning itself becomes grist for the literary mill. This is either diabolically clever, or just plain bollocks: an open-ended, distorted and fragmented text like this will definitely elicit a range of very diverse opinions and reactions.

I think this would have worked much better as a play. Certainly the structure lends itself more to drama than a novel. But then it would lose some of its anti-novel status, I suppose.

I certainly admire Doten, for this must have been a real bitch to write. Reading it (or trying to, in my case) is certainly a purgatorial (purgative?) experience. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day when I am in a better frame of mind, but for now, this has got the better of me.

[Vince · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mark Doten's masterful prose couldn't save this bizarre post-postmodern mess. A deliberate mess, but a mess. I was excited by the premise(s) of this novel, and it seems to have so much promise. Unfortunately, content was sacrificed for style. Does the fact that the author is a character in his own book say enough about his attempt at "meta-ness?" Mark Doten is a good writer, but this book is clearly written by a short story writer who was forced, or perhaps deluded himself, into thinking his short stories needed to be stitched together as an experimental novel. I hope Doren tries again, but I hope he skips the strange and pointless stylistic choices.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wildly imagined and wildly uneven. Maybe 1/4 of its length needs trimming away, but at the same time, its demented bagginess is part of the pleasure, so what do I know? Though I found some of its sections and voices more compelling than others, the overarching conceit (the Memex) was not only effective, but strangely affecting: all those voices in a digital echochamber equals instant pathos. It's like, we're capable of generating powerful information networks, but not workable human communities. So, for metaphysical evil to thrive, you don't need the Devil, you just need Dick Cheney.

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Burn boys always emerge
from rock formations
a fire licked cave
our burnt boy
comes with varied voices (obvious device)
deep, deep inside (cliche)
the whole world in his eyes (hackneyed)
yes, seriously, in Iraq...again
where hot sands ignite
f-l-a-m-es burn a boy
one can see our precious burnt boy
writing this tale, the plot is juvenile
but a grown man, filed under Really, Really?
the author would be better suited (on a good day)
writing copy for supermarket circulars.

Chris Roberts

[Matthew Gallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feel like this book is the first to capture/distill the best parts of the internet in a literary context (aka novel): glimpses of unexpected beauty amid the white noise; chaos and conspiracy and 'terror'; hilarious memes; identity and post-identity; lots of yearning for nothing you can really put your finger on.

[Brooks Sterritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Political violence keeps pushing in at the margins."

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a great premise and interesting beginning but by novel’s end it gets tedious and nearly unreadable. I almost wonder if that was some kind of mimicking of the history of the War in Iraq itself as we (reader and public) slowly lose/lost interest in the whole thing (novel and war). Thematic threads in the voices tend to become kind of pointless after awhile because they get too repetitive and I kind of wish this premise could have been explored in more readable format. I’m all for strange and I love novels with unique forms and structures. I love the idea of the Akkad Boy and of the Omnosyne but they get lost in the jumble. I even like the sections of “noise” that breaks the text natural flow. I can’t seem to find any author interviews about his intent with this novel, either. If you know of them, please share links.

[audley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dystopian and illuminating as my fave lines from an Ai or Alice Notley poem or 80s comic book or Akira or Radiohead or 1984 or Dennis Cooper... A visceral cartoon that feels more true than hell itself and as frustratingly empty. Worth it for the Tom Pally chapters alone, and I'm such a sucker for mechanical whirring death machines...

"We have everything but where is it?"

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

(place holder for actual review TK)

A devastating, sort-of "psycho-geography" of the Second Iraq War.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are not enough drugs availabe to make that readable!

[Rowan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenally written, deeply experimental, I understand the low ratings because it's hard to read and largely plotless but I loved it.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Doten was shooting for a modern Ulysses, and the concept that the experimentation of the novel is built upon is solid. However, behind the construct and hyper textuality lies a parade of voices that do not make a good novel in my humble opinion. I quickly stopped caring about nearly all of the dissonant characters; even my initial interest in the Bin Laden narration started to grate as he became one-note obsessed with a captive he incessantly calls "Jewbird". To be fair, my speed reading started a third way through the novel and picked up speed as I grew more impatient, so perhaps this wasn't my cup of absurd-it-tea. (Also, for what it's worth: Ulysses > Gravity's Rainbow)

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

By all appearances I had expected to go through this book in a few days. The chapters were short, the text size is normal; and I've been unimpressed by most current fiction's level of difficulty.
But, serves me right for my judgment. This novel-Infernal is a really good name for it-is not only very complex to the point of madness, it's also very well crafted. It's like a Pal Mall smooth sojurn to Hell that burns you a heartbeat afterwards. Accordingly I could only read it in little increments at a time.
It's not compulsively readable or page turning, which is not detrimental, rather it's just painful to each his own.

[Dane · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise sounded interesting: A severely burned boy is found and hooked up to some kind of interrogation machine. Once hooked to the machine, the boy starts speaking in several different voices, including some well-known political figures. Unfortunately these voices don't have anything interesting to say. It's just a bunch of repetitive nonsense. Most of the time I had no idea what they were ranting about. To make matters worse, the transcription files are corrupt, so the already nonsensical writing is constantly broken up by a bunch of random letters and numbers.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposedly a masterwork of deadly force, laying bare the twisted reasonings behind the War on Terror, but I didn't get far enough to see if that was true. You know, I'm a verse-chorus-verse kind of guy. Here's a story, a plot, characters, etc. Scan my shelves and you'll find very little we could apply the words "experimental" or "avant garde" to.

This has an intriguing premise, but the stream of consciousness rantings were jagged passages in my head as I read them and I just couldn't see putting myself through 400 freakin pages o f it.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

What? I have given up on VERY few books in my life. There are just too many good books to waste time on something attempting so hard to be...well, I have no idea.
I gave it plenty a fair shake in my opinion. I made it through the obnoxious Bush on his cell phone talking to Condie Rice and telling her he was being chocked. Being choked and will keep talking. Being choked. Being Choked. He'll keep talking. Being choked. Being choked. Being choked and will keep talking. Being choked. Being Choked. He'll keep talking. Being choked. Being choked.
Ok, I give up. I can't take this any longer!

[Sylvia · Rating 1 out of 5]

i have no idea what this was about. it was so far over my ability to either care or comprehend that i'm really not surprised that the reviews are so polarizing. it's the kind of thing where people will be really proud of getting it, like some sort of badge of intellectual ability, and then there's the people who don't get it and deride it as faux art garbage. i don't think it's garbage but holy hell did i get nothing out of reading it other than relief to be done!

[Ryan Fields · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't usually review books - and this isn't really one either. But I feel obligated to explain 1 or 2 star ratings. I picked this up because it was on the longlist for the 2016 ToB. I expected something completely different. Mostly, I just didn't really get it. There were a few times I considered the dreaded DNF, until one section would sort of bring me back. I do feel like the last 25% helped me somewhat. Still, feeling like a book is a labor is not good.
*2.5 stars

[Marcie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time following the story line and keeping everyone straight. The cadence and structure were very different and kept me uncomfortable for most of the book. Ultimately though, that was a good thing and by necessity kept me engaged. This is a book to read if you like something unconventional.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very fragmented and disjointed writing. I understand these were essentially files/reports, but the weird transmission gibberish took away from the flow of the book. If you asked me what this book is about, I honestly wouldn't know what to say.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre, challenging, and more than a little bit obsessed with contemporary American political villains (Donald Rumsfeld plays a key role), this is the book you should read if you want to scratch your head a lot and wonder what the meaning of it all could be.

[Charles Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm...not exactly sure what I just read, or what the plot was, exactly. But I know it filled me with dread, and horror at the violence and pain that comes from war (specifically, in this case, the "War on Terror"), and is dragged home by veterans and soldiers and victims. Overwhelming.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, surreal, experimental, and ultimately very haunting.

[Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nightmare novel about the War on Terror. The title and the structure reference Dante, but this is reflected through a mirror that's sometimes absurd and sometimes grotesque.

[Michael]

Only got through 50 or so pages and enjoyed what I read, but I feel like I need to be in the right mindset to absorb this work. Will pick it up again soon.

[Jason Brezinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A demanding read but worth the trouble. Surreal.

[Levi]

I honestly have no idea how to rate this book, or even what to say about it. I guess I'll just leave it at that.

[Druie]

Read a bunch of reviews and decided not to even start it...maybe another time.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not understand this book one bit. All i felt while reading it was hatred and loathing.