Forgotten Work

by Jason Guriel

A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book • "Strange and affectionate, like Almost Famous penned by Shakespeare. A love letter to music in all its myriad iterations."― Kirkus Reviews • "This book has no business being as good as it is."―Christian Wiman In the year 2063, on the edge of the Crater formerly known as Montréal, a middle-aged man and his ex’s daughter search for a cult the leader of a short-lived band named after a forgotten work of poetry and known to fans through a forgotten work of music criticism. In this exuberantly plotted verse novel, Guriel follows an obsessive cult-following through the twenty-first century. Some things change (there’s metamorphic smart print for music mags; the Web is called the “Zuck”). Some things don’t (poetry readings are still, mostly, terrible). But the characters, including a robot butler who stands with Ishiguro’s Stevens as one of the great literary domestics, are unforgettable. Splicing William Gibson with Roberto Bolaño, Pale Fire with Thomas Pynchon, Forgotten Work is a time-tripping work of speculative fiction. It’s a love story about fandom, an ode to music snobs, a satire on the human need to value the possible over the actual―and a verse novel of Nabokovian virtuosity.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction, Canada, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy

217 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2020

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly charming. I found myself slowing from my usual reading pace so I could spend more time with this. A speculative-fiction novel? in _VERSE_? It works so well, and I'm amazed at the way Jason Guriel has put some of the types of writing he has in rhyming couplets.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, to be fair. I selected this book based on its page count. Or more like I don’t think I would have read it, had it featured a correct page count. But for some reason both GR (unsurprisingly) and Amazon (hugely surprisingly) has wrong numbers, 98 and 128 respectively for a book that’s slightly over 200 pages.
Normally it wouldn’t have mattered as much for a novel with a plot as intriguing as Forgotten Work, but this isn’t a straightforward novel. It’s an experiment, the gimmick of which is a verse, and not just any verse, but a proper iambic pentameter. A rhyming one to boot.
And while I very much appreciate the form and Shakespeare who spun it, it doesn’t make for the easiest read and it does get tiresome after a time. It’s impressive, for sure. To sustain such a trick for the duration, to come up with that many rhymes and all that…it’s a gimmick and gimmicks get old, unless you’re really, really into them conceptually.
Or maybe it would have worked the entire way, had it not been so wildly digressive and all over the place plot wise. Because the plot here is very interesting, but it’s execution is rambling at best. Essentially, it’s about a famous band with a cult like following and the echoes their music has had on the generations of fans. Sounds simple? But wait, it’s also time tripping, some of it set in a near future, in a city devastated and remade into one of the more original living arrangements in fiction since the shire, featuring a wild and wide cast of characters, carbon based and AI, strange, mad, epic bunch of lunatics all singing and shouting at the moon to the tunes of the once upon a time band whose songs are beating their drums and stringing their thoughts still. Because, of course, music is like that. Good music has innate negligible senescence, it doesn’t age, it doesn’t die, it sticks around and stays young so long as there are ears to hear it and souls to appreciate it. It’s a form of immortality.
Some poetry has that quality too. Shakespeare certainly does. This book…isn’t on the same level, but has the potential to inspire the sort of cult like devotion it’s subject does. It’s certainly different and original enough.
Didn’t quite work for me, though I appreciated its singular approach to narrative. Maybe I’m too much of a traditionalist, several times I did try to imagine what it would have been like as a more conventional (linear, poetry free) book with the same story and it’d probably be very good, much more my speed. But, dear reader, your personal mileage may vary with this one.
Definitely an acquired taste sort of thing, but original enough of a work to not be forgotten.

[Jeroen Kuiper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scifi novel in rhyming verse. Satire of internet culture of pop band snobbery in searching for the one extremely rare single from a most obscure band.The traditional verse form clashed with the cyberpunk theme, which I presume is intentional. Most have been fun (and laborious) to write, but it didn't grip me and the form struck me more as silly than poetic.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw this recommended in the New York Times and bought it on a whim. It's in rhyming couplets, but apart from that it's mainly a gripping novel. Post-apocalyptic Montreal, but the characters are living their lives, they're not cardboard cutouts always reflecting on what made the Crater. Strong artistic theme of music and poetry. Very readable, the rhyme makes the story move faster than a prose novel would.

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel in verse about a forgotten band
Who after a review in mojo gain new fans
Which quickly become something of a cult

In Jason Guriel’s hands, fandom seems occult
As technology makes print and life seem
Something familiar but yet obscene:
Hologram magazines, a robot domestic
Prized vinyl singles, their sound majestic

It’s a story with a nice conclusion
Of people deep underground and in seclusion
His verse is so much better than mine
If you see a copy, you’ll have a good time

[Ian Mathers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. Gets two stars because of the quality of the writing, but it's the rare novel for me where the ideas, not the execution, is the real blemish. "Authors for a Safer World" would have been a silly example of tin-eared attempted satire at any point in my or the author's life spans, but it was especially stupid in 2020 and lands with an even more deadening thump reading it now. The bit where he drops his own name in the mentions of authors stifled by the group is clearly giving the game away (even more so than the multiple times the narrative applauds itself for being poetry that dares to - gasp - rhyme, which elicited an involuntary eye roll each time). He wants to be cancelled so bad. It's not just that dudes like this are snobs, or regressive, or the reason we started talking about rockism in the first place (shame on me for looking up his other writing and finding an essay where he swears he doesn't think high art is good and low art is bad, it's just that critics should only write about the former, and that's why nobody should engage with pop music, because there's nothing interesting there!); all of those are awful, and contemptible, and make parts of the argument here stultifying and fatuous. But they're also always so fucking annoying.

Which is a shame, because on a line-to-line level this reads just fine. It doesn't really work to have all sorts of random in-universe text crammed into that same format (a guy's blog post just happens to be in heroic couplets without this being mentioned or noticed? ok), but the feeling of reading it always works. And the basic gist of the story does appeal to me (or I wouldn't have picked it up at library). It's just a shame that it's in service of... this.

[Viv · Rating 3 out of 5]

*edit: GoodReads has this book listed at 96 pages, it is in fact 217*
First and foremost, if you're currently going through reviews of this book because you're interested in giving it a read, the plot line outlined in the summary doesn't start until about the 2/3rds mark.

This is really a collection of versed narratives involving fans and cult-like followers of a band who's music has been forgotten. These stories cross paths with each other at times and builds an interesting narrative structure.

I personally believe this would have been a stronger piece if it wasn't limited to it's iambic pentameter structure. There were multiple times where I had to stop and re-read stanzas and pages because the flow was choppy. At points, the prioritization of this structure was put over story writing and it would bring me out of the narrative being told.

This is very much written by a creative for a creative. It's extremely self referential of the author's own interests and life and at times can be eye roll-y (he even names himself in the narrative). In similar regards however, this is very much a love letter to what inspires you, fandom communities, and art that wasn't given the trust to exist.

The moments I loved, I absolutely loved. The moments I couldn't stand, were extremely hard to get through.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't write too many reviews but for this, it is worth it. This was a gem of a reading experience, and it took me far away from the day-to-day. The iambic pentameter is charming from the get-go and at times astonishing in either its humor or its breadth of vocabulary. If you are even slightly obsessive about popular music, the plot hums along breathlessly and paints a vivid portrait of what the world will look like for fans down the road a few years. I am going to go make sure all of my old vinyl 45's are safe and sound in their current storage location and far from the reach of any bots. I thoroughly enjoyed it all; I wish I could remember where I came across it so I could say thank you for the gift of time with this book.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me awhile to get into this. I read maybe the first fifty pages and then set it aside for a few weeks, but I am very glad that I picked it back up.

The challenge for me was getting used to the cadence of the couplets. I was also really thrown for a loop with the near future/sci-fi/dystopian elements of the story. At times I wished for a non-verse version of the novel that just built out the world more, but in the end the book was exactly what it needed to be.

A really unique and rewarding read.

[Brandi Staley-Sladek]

This was a DNF for me at around 75%. My biggest hurdle was the way in which this story was told - in iambic pentameter. The author’s choice to tell the story in verse made it difficult to follow even basic concepts like who the narrator was or what was happening at certain points in the story. The world building was interesting, if a bit pointless, and I appreciated the satirical view of our tech icons. I was told that the blurb on the back actually occurs in the last 50 or so pages of the book. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t interested enough to continue reading.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely engrossing arc of a lit-filled rhyming dystopia. I can't decide if I loved the gimmick, or it isn't a gimmick but a virtuoso artistic constraint. The combination of near-future, getting lost or losing yourself in a surveillance society, music/band theme, wordplay, just ideally suited to me.

[Jarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book written in verse about a band from to 2000s that has a cult following in the future. A sci-fi story heavily infused with obscure musical references. Plot a bit obscure at times but overall a fun, wonderful story.

[Jivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

V. Interesting speculative verse novel which follows the cult fame of a lost album by a lost band. At points, supremely entertaining. At points, the rhyming threw me out of the story. Deffo worth a read!

[Dan]

I really wanted to like this, but I just did not get hooked.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel in strictly rhymed iambic pentameter. And it works, mostly--although often I would be pulled out of the story to admire the fantastic rhymes.

[Iain Standing · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute miracle for the 21st century