Hystopia

by David Means (contributor)

By the early 1970s, President John F. Kennedy has survived several assassination attempts and—martyred, heroic—is now in his third term. Twenty-two-year-old Eugene Allen returns home from his tour of duty in Vietnam and begins to write a war novel—a book echoing Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five—about veterans who have their battlefield experiences "enfolded," wiped from their memories through drugs and therapy. In Eugene's fictive universe, veterans too damaged to be enfolded stalk the American heartland, reenacting atrocities on civilians and evading the Psych Corps, a federal agency dedicated to upholding the mental hygiene of the nation by any means necessary.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Alternate History, War, Novels, Literary Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2016

About the author

David Means is an American short story writer and novelist based in Nyack, New York. His stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to the Womb

The effect of this novel isn't one of a narrative opened and closed. It is more one of the creation and sustaining of a single feeling of cold vulnerability to everything in the world - from its people to the natural environment. The reader as well as the characters search constantly for some reassuring meaning. The pervasive drug-induced haze distorts everything, however, inducing the perception one has in the midst of a severe hangover of being one or two nano-seconds behind reality.

There is pregnant malice and real danger everywhere, in every human encounter, in the pollution and changeable weather of the Great Lakes, in the governmental forces of law and order, in the suppressed memories buried, by choice or through so-called 'enfolding therapy', in one's own psyche. The artistic skill necessary to maintain this 'story truth' as opposed to 'happening truth', to follow Tim O'Brien (perhaps Means's closest stylistic antecedent), is considerable; And it works. Means is undoubtedly a pro, but perhaps insidiously so.

What is, if any, the underlying theme that ties together the strands of war, horror, psychosis, self-delusion, 60's drug culture, fading industry, assassination, Northern boreal forests, indeed North itself as well as, one supposes, actual experience in this complicated work? Could it be the clue is in the title: Hystopia, from the Greek Hyster-Topos, the womb-place? A place which is beyond memory as well as before it, and yet determines so much of our response to the world; that watery place of existence before birth in which there is no time, no morality, no chance of independence, and no defence from invasion and imminent destruction except the uncertain goodwill society might provide.

Means makes much of the mitten-shape of the lower peninsula of Michigan (the left hand presumably), the place where Vietnam veterans who have failed, or avoided, the memory-erasure of enfoldment congregate. Is it coincidence that there is an anatomical abnormality, bicornuate uterus, that is frequently mitten-shaped and results in a variety of difficulties from miscarriage to foetal deformity? Not, in other words, a good place to find shelter much less in which to grow up. Hey, stranger things have happened in post-modernist lit.

[Doug · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Fuck plot and fuck story and fuck the way one thing fits to another and fuck cause and effect, because there wasn't none and if there was we didn't see much of it." p. 159

Kind of Means to provide his own review within the pages of his novel. I am not so much shocked at this being nominated for a Booker as I am flabbergasted that the damn thing ever got published in the first place! I mean, just WHO is the intended audience for this? Drug-addled illiterate crazy killer Nam-era vets, which comprises the majority of the characters, don't read. It isn't weird enough for fans of alternative/speculative fiction (e.g., China Mieville). It's TOO weird for psychologists and government wonks, who are the other main characters. Means apparently has a small rabid coterie of fans for his short fiction, but even they will be turned off by the extended length of this tome, which slogs on and on without much coherence or meaning. I can only speculate someone at FS&G thought there was a market for ersatz Robert Stone - but even the REAL Stone isn't getting read much these days!!!

To call the characters one-dimensional is to afford them a depth and complexity they don't warrant. And I hate it when an author is just plain sloppy - for instance: within the last 50 pages, Singleton informs Hank there are only 4 blue pills left, and Hank says that leaves one for each of them (i.e., including Meg and Wendy). A few pages later, Singleton and Wendy each take two of the pills, so there AREN'T any more left. And a few pages later (p. 306) we get: "Then they'd stay a few days together, take the final four pills, see what transpired...." Who the fuck edited this mess?

I can only hope this is the worst of the Booker longlist, because if there is anything less worthy, I may not make it through all thirteen.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew. Not an easy read at all.

There is this wonderful scene on page 154 of this novel, which is actually a book within a book, where one of the characters has a vision where she hears a dead boyfriend saying the following:

" I wonder who's going to tell the story, Meg? Nothing else to say. You see, you had to be here and you weren't. You know the one that goes: How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a lightbulb? How many? You fucking don't know because you weren't there, man."

And therein lies the irony of this novel -- in Hystopia, thanks to an initiative put into practice by the third Kennedy administration to help wipe out the traumatic memories of Vietnam vets, those who were there don't remember much more than those who'd never set foot in Vietnam.

To me, the novel reads like an examination into the role of history/memory both in terms of self and on a larger, national scale. Historical amnesia, let's call it, as just one example, keeps a government going back into wars or prolonging conflicts that are just pointless, producing people who come back damaged and traumatized. History can be remade, rewritten, reformed, and erased; on a personal level, many of the characters in this book discover a need to "unfold" -- to regain and reach down into those memories before they can make any real internal progress. The dilemma is that, as one character puts it, while "You feel good and clean with the trauma put away, but at the same time you want to know what really happened," which can often be destructive. Obviously, there's much more here; I haven't even begun to scratch this novel's surface. One more important thing that may help in trying to understand this book: in a 2010 article in Paris Review, Means notes that

" If a story wants to be told and you don't tell it, you'd better stand back because something's going to explode."

which is most certainly the case in this book, and highly appropriate as well.

I've posted more about this book in my reading journal if anyone's at all interested. I will say that aside from some things that sort of bogged this book down, interrupting the reading flow, I couldn't stop thinking about this novel after finishing it, and I think a second reading is definitely in the cards. There are some incredible moments here, especially in a section of about 15 pages (154-169) with some of the most powerful writing I've read in a very long time. Hystopia may be framed as an alternative history, but I think there's a good reason for doing it this way. And once again, I see I am swimming upstream of other readers in terms of really liking this book, but it is what it is. I would without hesitation recommend this novel -- it's certainly unlike anything I've read before. Well done.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hystopia is one of those books that’s hard for me to rate, because I appreciate it more than I actually enjoyed reading it. It’s a complex, mindfuck of a novel that pays homage to some of the most memorable works of postmodernist fiction from the late 20th century.

Here’s where I try to tell you what it’s about. Okay, so it’s the late 1960s, the Vietnam War is raging on, and Kennedy is about to enter his third term in office. In this revisionist history, the U.S. government has created a federal agency called Psych Corps tasked with addressing the mental health crisis that plagues returning veterans. This treatment is pretty much Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for war veterans: they administer a drug combined with immersive therapy that, when successful, erases their memories.

Hystopia follows two separate by related plot lines, destined to converge: In one plot line, Rake, a disturbed veteran who resisted treatment, kidnaps a mentally ill woman named Meg and takes her along with him on a deranged killing spree. Meanwhile, two Psych Corps agents — one of whom underwent the treatment himself — fall in love and find themselves on a mission to track down Rake.

But the strangest thing is that the story might not actually be about what we think it’s about — because, as we find out right up front, Hystopia is actually a story within a story, written by a veteran named Eugene trying to process his own grief.

Sound weird yet? It definitely is. As I was reading it, I kept thinking to myself, “I really hope this all comes together in a satisfying way.” It’s a very challenging book, so as a reader, you kind of need that satisfaction to justify the effort. Luckily, it delivered.

I can’t say that I fully understand what I just read, but I can tell you that it evoked all sorts of deep emotions in me anyway. When it comes down to it, it’s a sad story that confronts heavy, important themes — from war trauma and mental illness to grief and love — leaving us to question the depths of our own resilience.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Initially a promising premise, the book simply meanders and too many of the parts of the book, the reader is effectively left to work out what is happening (and more damningly does not really care).

Overall, a renowned short story writer has aimed unsuccessfully for his first novel with what could have made an excellent novella.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hystopia was not likely to be my cup of tea. I am not an avid devourer of Vietnam novels (although the Vietnam War just provides the pretext of this novel - it could be about the aftermath of any endless war, anywhere). I was a bit put off by the emphasis on drug use described in some reviews - I find reading about other people's altered states very boring. (But here too, while the characters are usually drugged by themselves or others, there's not much - some, but not much - dwelling on psychotropic visions. The constant pot-smoking is more of a tic than anything). And alternative history has always confused me a bit.

All that said, I minded reading Hystopia much less than I thought I would. The prose is for the most part crisp and impeccable. The bleak world created feels less like an alternative history of the 1970s (although maybe I don't know enough about JFK to understand what he means to Means) and more like another one of the grim dystopian near-future visions that have been popular, including with me, of late. PTSD, burning cities, post-industrial decay, propaganda and psy ops, pollution and societal collapse read as easily "now" or "soon" as "then". The allusions to Viet Nam are very unspecific (again, you feel like this is really any endless war - including perhaps the one we seem to be fighting now), and the repeated references to transistor radios and snowy TVs are the most period anchoring things you'll find.

That said, the novel within in a novel structure (a novel "enfolded" within a novel, as the book would put it), while an effective representation of the novel's thesis about trauma, was distancing. The characters remain cartoonish, yet I think the wistfulness of the "enfolded" plot requires us to care about them to make the novel more than a trick. Since we don't really, the novel lacks much emotional resonance.

The book is saturated in 70s cinematic tropes of bad violent outlaws on motorcycles on the one hand, and shifty government operatives on the other. The women in particular are classic 70s buddy movie ciphers - one is a cool sidekick who can handle a gun, and the other a psychically wounded victim - but neither is a real person. (This is also the whitest book about Vietnam and a Michigan torn apart by late 60s rioting you are ever likely to read. Even all the music is white. Truly.) I think Means is doing it all on purpose to play with our expectations of those cliches, but it doesn't make it easier to care.

So I was interested but I didn't love it and I can't wholeheartedly recommend it.

Still waiting for my Booker book! (Well, I loved the Sellout but I read that before the list).

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange, dreamy book, remniscent of 1984 and Philip K Dick. Hystopia is the book that Eugene Allen writes after returning from Vietnam, and it's bookended by author's notes, editor's notes, quotes from his family and friends. This is the kind of shit I go for: stories buried in stories, a self-conscious gimmick that throws the whole authorial agreement into question. This is fiction, of course: nothing is real. But the traditional agreement between authors and readers is that, for the duration of the book, the reader will pretend that it is real. The structure of Hystopia makes that impossible; from the very beginning, you're left to question if the notes are from the real author, the real editor, or if they're from their fictional counterparts.

It's particularly fitting for a book like this (I mean Allen's book, which is of course also Means' book), where Vietnam vets are "enfolding" their trauma - that is, they're part of a government sponsored program wherein they take a drug called Tripizoid (yes) and then play-act their 'nam experiences in the woods. Doing so essentially represses their memories, shutting them off in a very tiny portion of their minds where they can't access them (unless they swim in very cold water, a baptism of sorts, right? or unless they have very good sex). So the jist of this book is that most of the main characters have been enfolded. They're missing huge parts of their memories. They're doing lots of drugs, and partially unfolding old traumas, and trying to figure out the motives of the government Psych Corps. The reading experience largely mirrors the experiences of the characters: what the fuck is real? who can I trust, because I can't trust myself, and is anyone ever telling the truth?

And of course, bigger questions lurk beneath the surface: how best do you deal with trauma like this? You can make that pain and suffering go away, but at what cost - how responsible are our memories and traumas and suffering for our humanity itself? If you cut them away, what's left?

The writing in here is evocative. There are these glimmers of normalcy through the web of drugs and confusion, images of the forest, lakes through the trees, memories of beach parties before the war - they were beautiful and nostalgic and I want to live in them. It's almost self-conscious, though, as if the text knows (as if Allen knows?) that it's presenting these things through rose tinted glasses. In real life (in "real" life), Meg didn't fare so well, after all.

I read this at a strange time. I'm anxious, suspicious of everything, suspicious of myself. This book didn't ease my paranoia; there are a lot of questions here and very few answers. Maybe the answers aren't the point, though. I'm beginning to think there's no right or wrong, there's just the choices you make and how you deal with them.

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book lasted as long as the Vietnam War itself and is equally as messy, convoluted and incomprehensible. A waste of my good time.

[Neil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Have you seen the movie "Mike Bassett: England Manager" where two footballers, Benson and Hedges, are plucked from minor league obscurity to play for the England national football team because the manager writes the team selection on a packet of cigarettes? I am beginning to wonder if something similar has happened with this year's Man Booker Long List.

This book might not be quite as bad a 1* suggests, but I wanted to make sure it was clear that it is my least favourite of the 8 I have so far read from the list and I've already given just 2* to 3 of the others. It's a mess, I think. I don't understand how the supposedly related "facts" of Kennedy surviving into a third term and the Vietnam war continuing add to the story. I don't understand how the book within a book concept adds to the story. I didn't care about any of the characters and I didn't understand the point of the story (that last could be my problem, of course).

To be honest, when I think of several other books that I have read in the last few months, the fact that this one is on the Man Booker Long List instead of those makes me rather angry and depressed! I have struggled with several of the books on this year's long list, but this is the one that has finally made me question whether I will bother with the Booker next year.

[Mircalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meaning of dystopia

nell'America anni settanta di Means Kennedy è scampato a vari attentati, conduce i suoi affari e il Vietnam non è mai finito, e già qua è difficile non vedere il sottotesto di Means sull'America di Trump, bande di scoppiati reduci "avvolti" o svolti malamente (questo merita un dettaglio a parte: qui esiste una pratica con cui si avvolgono/rimuovono in senso psicoanalitico i ricordi legati al trauma della guerra dei reduci che ce la fanno a restare almeno fisicamente abili, e questi a volte si svolgono o ricordano semplicemente a causa di sesso ben fatto o immersione in acqua gelida e danno fuori di matto il doppio) girano immotivatamente a far vittime in tutto il Michigan e tutto questo è raccontato in un metaromanzo di un tipo che poi si è suicidato

dopo il racconto, solitamente breve e fulminante, Means si cimenta nel romanzo con un esito molto buono, i suoi protagonisti escono vividi dalla pagina e molto caratterizzati al punto da vederseli davanti mentre si legge, l'ambientazione è ultradistopica e assai intrigante, il tutto funziona alla perfezione e mentre siamo là che seguiamo gli agenti a caccia di un tipo svolto male che sclera il doppio consentito dalla normale "nevrosi da guerra"(Freud cit) ci accorgiamo che tutto è accaduto e che noi leggendone a posteriori possiamo solo assistere senza nessuna possibilità di prevedere nulla se non che la follia della guerra è la follia di popoli votati all'annullamento/annichilimento della pulsione di vita...

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow there was nothing for me in this book and I’m struggling to understand why/how it made the Man Booker longlist.
Let’s be real here, I might not always like a book: perhaps I found the plot dragged or the characters bland, perhaps I think it’s literary to a fault or that the writing could be better but there’s usually some redeeming quality that'll allow me to finish it.

So what went wrong?
Hystopia's opening 20 or so pages should have warned me that this wasn’t going to be an exceptionally well-plotted book. The beginning is pure exposition interspersed with self-referential lists and 'reviews' of some further fictional work to come. I was surprised but gave the book the benefit of the doubt: I figured that maybe this exposition would make the story a round (it's not where you're going but how you get there) or maybe Means had so much more to write he had to get the details out of the way first so he could concentrate on the juicy bits.

When the actual story started however, I realized that the first 20 pages were all of Means' ideas for this novel and about 50 pages later I realised that any development of the implications of the ideas introduced was not going to happen. So if we have all the pieces and the characters are just going through the motions, what is left? The only character not introduced in these 20 pages is the rebellious, horny Psych Corps agent (+1, since 'Wendy' is only ever visual stimulus). He is bland, whining and ogling after his girlfriend. Nothing literary here, nothing profound, and equally nothing plot or character-driven to make me care about this part of the story. Again, where is the hook?

I heard that this book was described as satire and social commentary but then I wonder, aside from anti-war rhetoric and identity after trauma which are drilled into us from page 1, what is it commenting on? Kennedy made a third term and went a little nuts but he's barely mentioned.

What most frustrates me is how good Hystopia sounded on paper; I don’t think the blurb was misleading it’s just a terribly executed novel. Nothing to enjoy, not even anything strong enough to hate.

Hystopia read like a gas-station crime drama that thought it was being smart. There is nothing I can think of that redeems it.

DNF’d at 150 pages.

[Nicole D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://thereadersroom.org/2016/08/26...

And then we came to the end … This is one of those books that can only be fully appreciated by getting to the end. It’s complex! I was so confused in the beginning and distracted by the fact that it starts out with an Editor’s Note which states that certain historical facts have been twisted to fit the fictive universe, and then goes on to say that one of those “facts” is that JFK had 7 attempts on his life, and the “Genuine Assassination” happened in September in Illinois. That’s not a spoiler, it’s like the first page. The point of this comment is that the beginning takes concentration and I don’t recommend this on audio, which is what I did. The audio was well done, but I had to rewind so many times I can recite parts by memory.

This is a SUPER creative look at the Vietnam War, and trauma in general. The characters were kind of hard to distinguish one from the other. That may have been partly the audio, but I don’t think so. I’m a bit in awe of the sophistication of this book, and absolutely see why it is nominated for the prize. For me, however, I appreciated it far more than I enjoyed it. It’s not something I would have read if not for this panel, and I’m glad I did. In fact, now that it’s done I feel like I should go back and read it to catch what I missed. (I felt much the same with last year’s winner A Brief History of Seven Killings.)

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I would not have picked this book up based on description, and only gave it a go because it was on the Man Booker prize list. I can see 50 pages in that this is not a book I wish to finish. It just isn't my thing. I do like the zany alternate history idea but the violence and meta-story, not so much.

(But it can be your thing.)

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Deer Hunter meets Natural Born Killer. Although I didn't enjoy it in the beginning, the book grew on me later on. Still, the novel-in-the-novel felt unnecessary, as did the setting (Kennedy is still alive in the 1970ies, serving his third term).
2.5*

[juliemcl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frustrating. Rooted for this book up until about page 200, but then felt like I was getting punked. It's a big mess. David Means is a highly-lauded short story writer and this is his debut novel. In fairness, the bulk of this book is a novel-within-a-novel written by a character named Eugene Allen, who is a very messed up 22-year-old Vietnam vet, and this Allen character at the very end acknowledges that he knows he's written a mess. So really it's the framing device, what little of it there is, that we're supposed to be focusing on as to what happened in reality, and then using the text of the "novel" to draw our conclusions about Allen's perceptions about what happened? I don't know man. Eugene Allen is not a good novelist, so it makes for a very not satisfying reading experience. Maybe as an exercise in some type of psychological course, OK.

Means is a good writer and i still intend to check out the shorts, but with this book i feel like he was getting pressure from his publisher (pressure from himself?) to flesh out what should have been a half-as-long novella. I really had to keep forcing myself back to finish. He gets points for writing a pretty scary bleak, hallucinatory landscape, that i guess you would just call "Michigan." The sex-on-drugs stuff is pretty realistic too, but don't get it for that since there's not much.

Must...stop...with...the... debut novels. Somebody stop me! Alas, they keep coming.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

War reports: The siege of Hue dragged on as the Marines struggled once again to take what was left of the Citadel. Jason Williamson – a.k.a. the stoned reporter – filed nightly radio reports in a drug-dreary voice that was oddly comforting. His modus operandi, which had won him a Pulitzer, was to be on the ground as stoned as possible and to catch a new perspective, to offer up reports steeped in the language of visions. He was on the so-called wire, or outside the wire, or near the wire, filing from a microphone attached to the lapel of his flak jacket, pausing to let the pop of gunfire punctuate his whispery narrative, which seemed at an odd remove from reality, peppered with phraseology that could only come from tripping, describing the way the tracer fire wrapped long ribbony bands over the Vietcong, a sweep of galloping ghosts.

Hystopia itself is “at an odd remove from reality”: it opens with a series of editor's notes, author's notes, and transcripts from interviews with those who knew the (fictional) author, all to set up an alternate history in which JFK survived the 1963 assassination attempt, went on to win a third term as president (hey, if it was good enough for Roosevelt), and as he doubled down on the Vietnam War, returning veterans were “enfolded” (through a combination of drugs and reenactments, the worst of traumatic war memories are tucked away inaccessibly in the vets' minds), but some veterans resist the process, becoming outlaws and gathering in Michigan where, by 1970, they have burned the state down. This is a tricky-clever plot, and while I can appreciate the craftsmanship of what author David Means achieved here, all of this story-at-a-remove kept the characters at a remove as well; I had zero emotional connection to this book, and as a result, I was left unsatisfied. More than anything, Hystopia reminded me of Infinite Jest: and you can feel free to call that a classic or a work of genius if you wish, but using an adjacent-reality to expose the inner workings of our own does nothing for me personally.

What we eventually learn about the fictional author of the book-within-a-book, Eugene Allen, is that he went to Vietnam and returned a haunted man, driven to process what he witnessed by writing the novel Hystopia. This novel details the murder spree of a vet who refused the enfoldment; a scary psychopath who broke a young woman (based on the author's own sister) out of a psychiatric facility and brought her to his safe house in upstate Michigan. The novel also follows the two Psych Corps agents who are eventually sent to catch the killer (and although they were led to believe that their relationship was illicit, they may have been the pawns of their own government agency all along). And while this novel proposes a happy ending for the young woman, in the notes that follow the actual novel, we'll learn that Eugene's sister's remains were found deteriorated in the woods not long before he killed himself. So, while on the one hand the reader is told that the book-within-a-book is pure fiction, the editor's notes at the beginning confirm that JFK had his third term and that Eugene Allen merely exaggerated the destruction of Michigan. There's a (fictional) quote from a noted critic calling the book-within-a-book a fictive world...bent double upon itself, as violent and destabilized as our own times, as pregnant and nonsensical (because of course none of this drugging and manipulating of the returning vets could be true), followed closely by a transcription of a vet saying: Don't accuse the kid of bending history. Accuse history of bending the kid. And the war, the war bent him, too. Like so many, he came back changed. This is followed by other vets saying that they were enfolded just as the book described, using drugs and dramatic reenactments. So, it happened, but it didn't happen, but it did happen; to what end?

The female Psych Corps agent (as the daughter of a Korean War vet and the former girlfriend of a damaged Vietnam Vet who likes to be referred to as the Zomboid) is the only one who looks at the bigger picture and comes up with lines like: She kissed him and then said, still whispering, that conspiracy was a male thing. Men had a need to find structures in encounters that arrived out of desire. They longed for string-pulling at the highest level. And: Men kill fucking men...Without something to enfold there's no enfolding. Men go out and make sure they have something to treat. So, war is inevitable? We will always throw our young people into the meat grinder, mistreat them when they (if they) return, look for easy solutions from Big Pharma, and happily swallow whatever official lies the government is feeding us even as they pull a lot of dubious strings behind the scenes? By taking all this to an absurdist extreme and setting it in the Vietnam era, is this truly a scathing critique of our own era and our own returning veterans? I don't know.

He sat next to her and looked at the sky, at the pearly whites and heavy grays and deeper silvers out to the horizon, gripping the water as it reached up – close in color, not too different – and the sky reached down to form a slice of deeper dark where the two met, and the heavy waves, closer in, lumbering slowly with larger gaps between as if avoiding each other, and he could hear – in the sound of the waves, in the lift of the wind – the way it spoke to the trees behind them, and the trees were speaking back, with a deep sigh, carrying the far-off scent of wide, boreal forests in the high reaches of the Canadian Shield, where an answer to the eternal question was forming.

I read this on the white sand beach along the eastern shores of Lake Huron; Michigan too far away to see on the other side of those breaking silver waves; and nothing about the writing made me feel connected to what was going on in the book. The book-within-a-book is followed by more editor's notes, letters written by the (fictional) author, and further interview transcripts, and while they did serve to answer some questions about reality (or at least “reality”), I honestly couldn't wait for them to be done; I felt my patience was being tried by the (actual) author. Definitely not my favourite from the 2016 Man Booker longlist.

[Lindaanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hystopia is a rollicking, brilliantly conceived reverie that takes place in an apocalyptic post-war (Vietnam) USA, specifically the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. It's really a book within a book, based on the post-suicidal ruminations of the introverted sensitive Eugene Allen. As a proud survivor of the Vietnam era and all that entails (spiritualism, drugs, existential angst, et. al.), I absolutely loved the nostalgic vibe of the book. My only problem is the limited and misogynistic vision of the female characters, that would be: (1) MomMom, an elderly maternal figure given to demented fits of religious fervor; (2) Meg, a slender beautiful but troubled girl who is used and abused by the male protaganists; and (3) Wendy, the strongest female character, a Psych Corps agent who falls for one of the Vets and dreams of marriage with him using her late mother's wedding veil. Meanwhile the men bond over mayhem and war. However, one can only hope that the author wrote the female characters this way to capture the culture of the times. I read Hystopia in a 12-hour burst of insomniac nocturnal joy. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for me.

[Venessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, be clear that this is a book written by a fictional character (both book and fictional author conjured up by the amazing David Means). Eugene Allen is 22, and has just returned from an operational tour in Vietnam in the 1970s.

From the first editor's notes, the horror and honour of Vietnam is emphasised to reveal trauma and violence so brutal, it matches the fictional author's notion of treatment given to veterans.

Be prepared. This book is a fairy tale, a journey, an insane rambling, a minefield of twists and turns. It plants seeds of paranoia and self doubt: "It's the insane will of the insane to suffer insanely". I was halfway through before I was conscious of how much I was involved with the characters (dreamt up by the fictional author). Often I was not sure of what was really going on, something to be owed to the storyline which involved a lot of mind altering drugs, and the clever writing by Means.

This book is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars reviews are up on our blog as part of our Man Booker feature. Check out how we all rated it:

https://thereadersroom.org/2016/08/26...

This was book number 5 and in what must be a first, I have very much liked/loved all 5 so far. Hystopia had a rocky start for me but I ultimately loved it.

[derek allard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book hooked me in the first 20 or so pages and I was excited to read it ... but when it gets into the novel within a novel, which is most of the book, it just falls flat. Perhaps I should have started with one of his short story collections.

[Bex · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this!! my favourite man booker nominee so far and more than likely a reread at some future point in time.

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alternate history meta-fiction is not what I usually go for at all but I really enjoyed this. Means explores therapeutic amnesia (in a completely different way to Ishiguro in The Buried Giant) as he reimagines 1960s America and its involvement in Vietnam. It's a book within a book but still accessible. I won't pretend that I understood this book completely and it being 'in conversation with Homer's Iliad,' as stated on the back cover. I'm not even completely sure what that means. This is David Means's first novel (I've enjoyed his short stories) and he has made the transition well. I see why this is on the Booker longlist (it's the postmodern entry as Satin Island ((which I completely hated)) was last year) though I wouldn't expect it to win the prize. But who knows with the Booker. I'm glad I read this as it's so different to what I usually read and it challenged me in all sorts of ways.

[Dree · Rating 1 out of 5]

This alt history novel features some great ideas--Kennedy survived the first assassination attempt, the Vietnam war has gone on for years, PTSD is now treated with "enfolding". Enfolding involves drugs, reenactment, and results in everything key to the traumatic memories being hidden within the brain like a nugget.

So it could be really interesting. But this reads like a "guys book" (hey dude!). The writing is meh. The story is all about the guys (Meg is written as something the guys talk about, even the narrator is a guy). This book in unreadable because of the violence. Too much violence. So much violence. Shooting, cutting heads off. Not just during war. After war, at home. Breaking in, shooting, killing adults and kids just because. Killing dogs just because. Just killing.

I made it halfway into this book and realized that was too far. Horrible book, I don't get how people even imagine this crap and why in the world they want to write it down. An author to avoid.

[Kris Fernandez-Everett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good idea, terrible execution... Wordy in places for the sake of having words -- which by default makes it repetitive -- and at various times, fails to elevate the mundane or cliched into something meaningful... Most annoyingly, Iggy Pop likely won't see a dime from this book even though his name is taken in vain throughout it. Save yourself a couple of hours -- cue up 'Raw Power' on your stereo, and you'll experience the same themes without the tedium of over-inflated prose. Glad I finished so that I can say I finished.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF halfway through

No.

[Kasa Cotugno]

Got 1/2 way through and could not continue. What's with the Booker nominees? Tim O'Brien set the standards in writing about PTSD, and this one doesn't come close.

[Keets · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. Different, unexpected, a true mind bender that speaks to issues such as PTSD that are very relevant today.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Means’s Hystopia (2016) is a novel of alternative reality, a reimagining of the Viet Nam era. The voices are those of the living and the dead from Viet Nam. A conceit of the book is that it is written by a fictional Viet Nam vet named Eugene Allen whose sister, Meg Allen, is a central character with a psychotic breakdown; Meg’s trauma is her loss of her boyfriend Billie-T in Viet Nam. Allen’s manuscript, discovered by his mother after his death in 1974, is the core of this weird work. While it is weird, it is the kind of weird that shouts its message clearly: War is hell, and Reality is random.

What we have is a complex story about a writer writing about a writer: the writer is Eugene Allen, whose saga of family tragedy linked to Viet Nam is the core of the book. The writer writing about the writer is David Means, who expresses himself in the lengthy prologue and postlogue that are a psychological profile of Allen drawn from interviews with Allen’s friends and family. In this profile, Means has a bit of fun with critics of Allen's manuscript. One interviewee offers the following:

I came home from Nam and went back to school. As a scholar of Vietnamese literature I can say, with all frankness, that Hystopia is one of the strangest documents to come out of the war years. I can’t say it’s the most honest. A parataxic construct of sorts.

Whether this is an endorsement or an indictment is unclear, but another reader of Allen’s manuscript is very clear:

Look the guy had more than Holing-Up Syndrome. That guy was wacko. I’m sorry he killed himself, but after trying to read this I’d say it was for the best.

Means has fun making subtle connections. For example, his character Hank goes to Michigan’s “Two-Hearted River,” a reference to Hemingway’s short story The Big Two-Hearted River about a WWI veteran who goes to the Michigan wilderness at the Two-Hearted River to get in tune with nature.

Means also has a fundamental theme of the randomness of life: Man Plans, God Laughs! life's path is the result of luck, not planning. To present this theme he discusses the construction of military operations reports: the action itself is always wildly different from the plan, with pure luck determining the twists and turns that define the fate of both the individuals and the operation. But the writers of reports always look back from the end-point and write a narrative that makes the action seem logical and according to plan rather than the random clusterfuck it was. This satisfies our need for order while wildly misrepresenting the event.

The setting for Hystopia is Michigan in the late 1960’s, during JFK’s third term; he will be assassinated in 1970 on the seventh and final attempt. The Viet Nam war is still underway and Michigan (hence America) is broken by riots centered in Flint and Detroit; Michigan is burning from the city riots and the torching of forests. Kennedy’s newly created Psych Corps has developed a new psychiatric therapy designed to allow traumatized Viet Nam veterans to slide easily into life civilian life: they are given a drug called Tripizoid and forced to vividly relive their traumatizing events through actual re-enactments. The result is that their bad memories are “enfolded,” trapped in a sort of locked file in the brain, out of harm’s way. The enfolded vets are then placed in residential areas called Grids until they are cured. Psych Corps insiders know that enfoldment is a sham—it works because enfoldees think it works—but it does work for many on many types of psychoses. However, intense life experiences, like great sex or immersion in cold water, can cause unenfoldment—an opening of the brain file. Unenfoldment means that the trauma returns even greater than before enfoldment

One enfoldee, Rake, didn’t get the memo. Among the earliest enfoldees, he has been re-enfolded several times and each time his trauma worsens. He is now pure psychosis. Rake has abducted Eugene’s sister, Meg Allen, from a Psych Corps facility. The two are on a murder-as-fun spree; Meg is an unwilling participant, but she is so zonked on drugs that she couldn’t find her will if she was sitting on it. Rake is just having fun living la vida loca. As one might expect, Rake develops a small cult around him: the tree hugger Hank and the timid kid Haze, who might have been a turncoat in Nam and become a major killer for the VC.

Klein is an agent of the Psych Corps who is tasked with tracking Rake down and terminating him. Klein’s assistant, Myron Singleton, is an enfolded veteran who is having an illicit relationship with Wendy Zapf, another Psych Corps agent; both are assigned to track down failed enfoldees. Because “fraternizing” with colleagues is prohibited, they are in violation of strict regulations. But Klein ignores the infraction and lets the relationship develop. We wonder if Wendy and Singleton might have been thrown together by a Psych Corps conspiracy.

Hank is a self-enfolded Viet Nam vet who had served with Rake, Eugene, and Billie-T. He is the Hemingway character who has returned to Michigan to live at the Two-Hearted River in the wilderness and connect with nature. Hank connects with Rake and Meg and becomes very attached to Meg—a fact that Rake sees. Rake and Hank are looking for opportunities to kill each other, but Hank still has a moral resistance. Rake and Hank will remain at odds, but Hank understands Rake and will out-psych him, inducing Rake's strange death-by-stupidity.

The book is dark and forgoes logic by presenting so many possible paths that the mind boggles—it is the operational report with all the possible narratives; those who like clarity and order will be turned off. But those who enjoy the mind puzzles and like to work hard for the meat in a book might find a treasure. Find out which you are!

Four and ½ stars.

RATING SYSTEM:
5 = I would certainly read another work by this author
4 = I would probably read another work by this author
3 = I might read another work by this author
2 = I probably would NOT read another work by this author
1 = Never! Never! Never!

[Carlos]

Como en El cuento de la criada de Margaret Atwood, el distanciamiento del prólogo y epílogo da nueva dimensión-lectura a la anécdota principal. Pero mientras la criada de Atwood es un personaje cruelmente ambiguo -e incluso desechado-, acá se trata de la biografía de un adolescente-joven tortuoso que encuentra en la escritura una forma de conjurar sus desgracias. Entonces se me acercó a esta otra novela de modita, Tres noches (o Tony & Susan) de Austin Wright, que detrás de sus dos anécdotas siempre está contando la biografía de quien escribió.

Hay un acercamiento interesante a qué es el autor, que ya se veía venir desde Vergüenza de Rushdie y algunos momentos de Kundera: la creación es reciclaje de los asuntos propios pero también imaginación que al reelaborar la historia de quien escribe de otra manera, le da oportunidad de consuelo o redención. La historia no es lo que ocurrió de verdad, sino la interpretación de quien la ha vivido -y quien quiere olvidarla o deformarla para poder hacerla asequible.

Esto debe leerse con mucho punk aunque la Guerra de Vietnam y las drogas remitan más a la psicodelia.

[MisterHobgoblin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hystopia is a little puzzle box of a book.

The bulk of the text is a conspiracy theory story in an alternative history of the United States (clearly grounded in alternative reality by the survival of President Kennedy and his election to a third term in office) where Vietnam veterans are given medication to forget the horrors they have seen. This process – enfolding – does not always work and rogue veterans who resist the drug or start to unfold end up in Michigan, dodging the authorities and re-enacting the atrocities of war. Very specifically, we follow the pursuit of Rake, an unfolded vet who has hooked up with Meg Allen, Hank and Haze, by Singleton and Wendy, two officers in the Psych Corps. Singleton and Rake share a common history in Vietnam, but represent the different paths that veterans can follow, depending on whether they enfold or remain unfolded.

The whole thing is quite trippy, quite violent and quite pointless. Neither side seems to have any strategic objective. Both seem to be driven by powers they don’t control. And it’s certainly not a good versus evil thing – whilst the Psych Corps clearly represent “The Man” and Rake clearly represents The Individual, Rake is a violent and abusive man who is a danger to everyone he meets. Overall, I suppose it just represents an unhappy state of affairs – how do you resolve the dilemma of society and the self – answer: don’t start here.

It is very well told, switching narrative perspectives between both sides – albeit both sides told by the same strong unseen narrative voice. This allows a balance to be struck between action and editorial comment; there is a dose of philosophy coming through the narrator without having to put inauthentic expository dialogue into the mouths of the characters.

But here’s the rub. The narrator, Eugene Allen, is a character himself in the bookending opening and closing sections. These portray the core as a fiction written by Eugene to reconcile himself to the fate of his sister Meg and the grief she experienced at the death of her lover, Billy, in Vietnam. We have snippets of letters, interviews with friends and neighbours, authorial notes and editorial notes. The alternative history is set clearly as fiction, with the bookended sections presented as reality. This turns the gigantic conspiracy of the novel with its titanic characters into nothing more than a personal fantasy created to spite Eugene’s sister’s unsuitable friends.

Then again, the wise reader will realise that just as Rake is a character created by Eugene, so Eugene is a character created by David Means. In which case, perhaps Eugene was created just to tell the core story that might carry some greater truth…

And it would be great if we could have a little blue pill that would make us forget all our troubles. Wouldn’t it?