Timing the Infinite

by Nathaniel Schmeling

College programmer Stranger is an anxiety ridden over-thinker who takes psychoactive drugs while contemplating the heretical philosophical gambit of techno-anarchy to Satanism. Masking this underlying nerdiness with the public persona of an alpha-male heavy drinking frat star, he's coming to age as a mixed kid whose parents were born during the Civil Rights movement; one generation removed, he is increasingly forced to confront the myths of a post-racial America. Oh, and because these daily identity crises didn't cause enough trouble, Stranger falls in love for the first time, despite never having had a girlfriend or sex sober. He's become enthralled with the demure, soulfully morbid Gunny, who not only has a boyfriend but self-esteem issues that manifest in the self-harm practice of cutting, and she isn't exactly ready to leave the one guy who's supported her throughout the addiction. But don't worry, Stranger doesn't navigate this collegiate underworld alone, he has a whole cast of equally brilliant but disturbed misfits for his hedonistic, poetical high-romance odyssey. And throughout the chronicles of these madcap, absurdest tales, Stranger learns of the limits to love and the pains to be temporary, of failing friendships and intimate escapades, of youth and the aging world.

Genres: Fiction

442 pages, Paperback

First published July 23, 2017

Reviews

[Tessa Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminds me of afterparties at 4 AM, after a night of a heavy partying when everyone is winding down and the rest of the world is going to sleep... but you and your friends are the only ones awake, and everyone is f*cked up but you're having deep discussions about life, philosophy, race, and what it means to exist in this universe. It's raw, it's unfiltered, and it makes you think of the world differently.

It's not an easy book to read, and you'll need to keep your dictionary near you; but you'll come out of it a better and more enlightened person.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nathaniel Schmeling's Timing the Infinite is written in the grand, proud tradition of the bizarro genre; so in other words, it doesn't overly concern itself with adhering to any kind of internal logic to its universe (kind of like reading a cartoon that's been written out as a novel), and big chunks of it are done in stream-of-consciousness prose, the story of a psychedelics-loving computer coder whose tale is mostly seen through his LSD-addled mind. For me personally, that's not my particular cup of tea, and in fact it's fair to say that for most general non-bizarro readers, they will find this so tedious and maddening that they will be inspired to track down Schmeling in real life, just so they can angrily smack him in the face as hard as they can. But if you're a fan of, say, Mark Leyner, Chuck Palahniuk, or pretty much any book from Eraserhead Press, this will be exactly up your alley, a fine example of bizarro lit that you'll want to check out soon. I'm giving it 5 stars to that specific audience, and 1 star to everyone else, which averages out to the 3 stars I'm assigning it at Goodreads.

[Gregg Sapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early in Nathaniel Schmeling’s trippy novel, “Timing the infinite,” the main character, Stranger, explains “intelligence tests place me in the top .01% and the supplemental psychiatric tests indicated a 94% chance of sociopathy.” He possesses an insatiable mind capable of processing vast amounts of information, but his innate sociopathy manifests in an inability to focus or establish healthy relationships, and tendencies toward self-destruction. Furthermore, he is mixed race, drug-addled, unsure of is his place in the world, and hopelessly in love.

Stranger is a college student who keeps company with equally neurotic peers and hedonistic frat boys. Reinforced by a cafeteria menu of booze and mind-altering substances, Stranger creates exquisitely complex yet utterly inscrutable rationalizations for just about everything. As in a morality play, Stranger’s colleagues are given names like Jester, Manic, Variable, etc. They spend almost all their time getting wasted and discoursing endlessly on sex, drugs, art, philosophy, politics, popular cultural, and more sex. The one thing they never seem to do is study.

Gunny is the object of Stanger’s passion. She, too, is psychologically damaged — for example, she cuts herself — which largely accounts for the attraction. Gunny is his “fantastic fantasy,” and he is smitten “Not at her form but her internal figure.” Unlike the libertine Stranger, Gunny does not drink and remains faithful to her boyfriend. Their platonic distance agonizes Stranger, but also frees him to be totally candid. “There are two kinds of people, my dear,” he tells her, “hopeless romantics and hopeful romantics.”

Schmeling employs a clever technique to craft a narrative reflecting Stranger’s mind space. Actions and events occur in the third person, present tense, which is interrupted repeatedly by Stranger’s erratic thoughts, conveyed in a first person stream of consciousness. Stranger’s physical reality and his mental world seldom interact. Fleeting moments sometimes give rise to meandering ruminations which span multiple topics, sometimes lasting for several pages.

There is no plot to speak of. The flow is driven by rapid dialog and circuitous albeit often insightful musings. Beyond the final chapter there is an “opuscule companion piece” with ten more chapters of breathless, continuous harangue. They hit the reader like a firehose in the face, and while there are some marvelous passages, the ultimate effect is that they pile self-indulgence upon incomprehensibility.

“Timing the Infinite” establishes Schmeling as a writer to watch, whose virtuosity with the language would benefit from a modicum of restraint.