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Natural Complexions
In the late 1960s, J.G. Ballard levied a fierce critique against the then-new phenomenon of media politics, populating the "condensed novels" of The Atrocity Exhibition with such real-life fictionalised characters as Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK, Marilyn Monroe and, of course, Ronald Reagan (whom his protagonist wanted to fuck). He fashioned an insane protagonist: a doctor at a mental hospital who himself surrenders to a world of psychosis. Ballard vied for a scandal and managed to cause one.
50 years later, D. Harlan Wilson's Natural Complexions explores the dynamics of contemporary American media pathology and resorts to similar formal strategies. Wilson collects satirical vignettes and docufictions extrapolated from actual news stories, spam emails, advertisements, social networks, and other scraps of disposable infotainment. There is little need for fictionalizing here, as today, there's no fiction more fictional than the "real."
Through the interactions of over 100 characters, among them movie stars, ex-presidents, televangelists, motivational speakers, con artists, back-alley philosophers, forensics experts and Biblical kings, the book faithfully renders the absurdist spiritus mundi that galvanizes the cultural landscape. In contemporary America, you don't get to fuck the president, but the president sure as hell gets to fuck you. Wilson's protagonist, a mysterious trickster named Brian Gonka, haunts the narrative like a machinic ghost. In these pages, sanity is not longer and option; the clarity of insanity is a rule of thumb.
Natural Complexions is a biting satire on modern life as lived online and saturated by media idiocy and the closed circuits of celebrity status at every turn. Its masterful combination of hilarity and eeriness functions as a 21st-century upgrade of the Kafkaesque—both in its compressed epigraphic form and in its obsession with the (im)possibilities of the sacred.
50 years later, D. Harlan Wilson's Natural Complexions explores the dynamics of contemporary American media pathology and resorts to similar formal strategies. Wilson collects satirical vignettes and docufictions extrapolated from actual news stories, spam emails, advertisements, social networks, and other scraps of disposable infotainment. There is little need for fictionalizing here, as today, there's no fiction more fictional than the "real."
Through the interactions of over 100 characters, among them movie stars, ex-presidents, televangelists, motivational speakers, con artists, back-alley philosophers, forensics experts and Biblical kings, the book faithfully renders the absurdist spiritus mundi that galvanizes the cultural landscape. In contemporary America, you don't get to fuck the president, but the president sure as hell gets to fuck you. Wilson's protagonist, a mysterious trickster named Brian Gonka, haunts the narrative like a machinic ghost. In these pages, sanity is not longer and option; the clarity of insanity is a rule of thumb.
Natural Complexions is a biting satire on modern life as lived online and saturated by media idiocy and the closed circuits of celebrity status at every turn. Its masterful combination of hilarity and eeriness functions as a 21st-century upgrade of the Kafkaesque—both in its compressed epigraphic form and in its obsession with the (im)possibilities of the sacred.
80 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2018
23 people want to read
About the author
D. Harlan Wilson
72 books349 followersD. Harlan Wilson is an award-winning American novelist, literary critic, editor, playwright, and college professor. He is the author of over thirty book-length works of fiction and nonfiction, and hundreds of hist stories, plays, essays, and reviews have been published across the world in more than ten languages. Recent books include Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness, Minority Report, Jackanape and the Fingermen, and Outré.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 13, 2019
D. Harlan Wilson gives us over 50 short anecdotes, some with recurring characters, delivered with his unique irreal style. Here is a random paragraph to give a bit of a taster --- Offset by the blunt realization that he remains "merely a household God, no better than a minor deity in a soap opera," Father Bauer storms through the narrow aisles of pews and organ pipes swinging a mad axe. He wears a Force Publique jacket that he found in the prop room beneath the Lady Chapel and his breakdown is partly an excuse to wear it. ---
July 5, 2019
While it's one of my first Harlan Wilson books —after Peckinpah, which I loved dearly—, these stories show a crazy, unsettling and often hilarious world in which Wilson's prose shines through. I'll try to find some more of his stuff to read!
October 14, 2019
Wilson pieces together a collage of mixed actualities from “Beyond the Veil” with a cleaver wit of humor, a cast of characters replaying roles in top stories of natural complexions in today’s society.
I could read these docufictions all day, like a calendar’s word of the day then run about my own days-worth of Natural Complexities.
I could read these docufictions all day, like a calendar’s word of the day then run about my own days-worth of Natural Complexities.
August 20, 2019
FULL REVIEW AVAILABLE AT THREE CROWS MAGAZINE
INTO THE GONKAVERS: NATURAL COMPLEXIONS REVIEW
This book lies to you even before you crack it open – the 76-paged paperback in no way prepares you to the density it has prepared inside. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready for hundreds of characters in dozens of intertwined stories with guest appearances from US presidents, L. Ron Hubbard, a short-lived Instagram star that got too-hot-too-fast, a couple of gods, Biblical kings, movie stars, murderers, and of course - BRIAN GONKA.
BRIAN GONKA is not your average protagonist. He is not even an average Wilsonian protagonist – among his characters you can find caricatures and reflections on current politics, fantastical concepts personified, past mistakes in US foreign and domestic politics, cultural appropriation, Instagram stars and the speed of rise and fall into stardom, thieves, bodybuilders, and many others, but there is only on BRIAN GONKA. The actor, the murdered and the detective simultaneously, the B.G, he is the evil, and the pickup master, the devil and the guru of this world. At first, you think that Brian Gonka lives in every corner of this book’s world, but by the end, you know that this book lives in a BRIAN GONKA world.
Hawgstrüffel Media broke this story.
INTO THE GONKAVERS: NATURAL COMPLEXIONS REVIEW
This book lies to you even before you crack it open – the 76-paged paperback in no way prepares you to the density it has prepared inside. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready for hundreds of characters in dozens of intertwined stories with guest appearances from US presidents, L. Ron Hubbard, a short-lived Instagram star that got too-hot-too-fast, a couple of gods, Biblical kings, movie stars, murderers, and of course - BRIAN GONKA.
BRIAN GONKA is not your average protagonist. He is not even an average Wilsonian protagonist – among his characters you can find caricatures and reflections on current politics, fantastical concepts personified, past mistakes in US foreign and domestic politics, cultural appropriation, Instagram stars and the speed of rise and fall into stardom, thieves, bodybuilders, and many others, but there is only on BRIAN GONKA. The actor, the murdered and the detective simultaneously, the B.G, he is the evil, and the pickup master, the devil and the guru of this world. At first, you think that Brian Gonka lives in every corner of this book’s world, but by the end, you know that this book lives in a BRIAN GONKA world.
Hawgstrüffel Media broke this story.
October 6, 2019
This book can fit into the inner pocket of most formal and semi-formal jackets.
If this is not enough to persuade you to buy and read this book, let me try the following.
Mr. D. has been writing absurdist books for several years now. But what this dense and tiny volume accomplishes is surprising even to old readers of D.
Intertwined short stories which can move you, make you laugh, make you cringe, and cause you ontological crises (“The man is not a man. He is a sick reptile who dimly remembers the cheap suit of his human incarnation” —From "Gonkapocalypse"). A great addition to the tradition popularized by William Burroughs: a book which you can read in any order; which you can access at any point. Because, even if the stories are somewhat connected, they can be enjoyed as stand-alone without a problem. My favorites are:
-The Wind from Nowhere
-Derring-Don’t
-L. Ron Hubbard’s White House Tapes
-The Book of Windows
-Law Enforcement Jargon
-Death Sentences
-Beyond the Veil
-Mindfulness
-Good Rehabilitation Facilities Make Good Neighbors
-Thus Fowl Precedes Fermentation
-APBs
-Man Accused of Spraying Grocery Store Food with Mouse Poison
If you come across this book, I dare you to read one of these and not being hooked (unless you are a very uncurious reader without a sense of humor). Why read a series of short, absurdist parodies of current society, you ask? Because, as I hope the fragment I quoted above illustrates, this is a beautifully written book. It may be absurd, but it has brain, it has a heart, and it’s a lot of fun.
If this is not enough to persuade you to buy and read this book, let me try the following.
Mr. D. has been writing absurdist books for several years now. But what this dense and tiny volume accomplishes is surprising even to old readers of D.
Intertwined short stories which can move you, make you laugh, make you cringe, and cause you ontological crises (“The man is not a man. He is a sick reptile who dimly remembers the cheap suit of his human incarnation” —From "Gonkapocalypse"). A great addition to the tradition popularized by William Burroughs: a book which you can read in any order; which you can access at any point. Because, even if the stories are somewhat connected, they can be enjoyed as stand-alone without a problem. My favorites are:
-The Wind from Nowhere
-Derring-Don’t
-L. Ron Hubbard’s White House Tapes
-The Book of Windows
-Law Enforcement Jargon
-Death Sentences
-Beyond the Veil
-Mindfulness
-Good Rehabilitation Facilities Make Good Neighbors
-Thus Fowl Precedes Fermentation
-APBs
-Man Accused of Spraying Grocery Store Food with Mouse Poison
If you come across this book, I dare you to read one of these and not being hooked (unless you are a very uncurious reader without a sense of humor). Why read a series of short, absurdist parodies of current society, you ask? Because, as I hope the fragment I quoted above illustrates, this is a beautifully written book. It may be absurd, but it has brain, it has a heart, and it’s a lot of fun.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews