And Your Point Is?

by Steve Aylett

This follow-up to LINT, the biography of cult author Jeff Lint, delves deeper into the psychosis of the seminal writer's work. This series of essays and reviews from around the globe, representing decades of study, is being presented for the first time in collected form. A must-have for collectors, students, imitators, and stalkers alike. "Satire has no effect-a mirror holds no fear for those with no shame." Contributors include Steve Aylett, Eileen Welsome, Arkhipov Halt, Daniel Guyal, Chris Diana, Alfred Bork, Michael H. Hersh, George Cane, Dennis Ofstein, and Jean-Marie Guerin.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction

116 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 2006

About the author

Steve Aylett is a satirical science fiction and weird slipstream author of books such as LINT, The Book Lovers and Slaughtermatic, and comics including Hyperthick. He is known for his colourful satire attacking the manipulations of authority. Aylett is synaesthetic. He lives in Scotland.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Aylett’s Lint is one of my favourite books and among the funniest things I’ve ever read. It is the biography of a fake author named Jeff Lint, told in Aylett’s uncategorisably weird style. ‘And Your Point Is?’ is a companion to Lint, consisting of short pseudo-academic essays on Lint’s fake oeuvre. Although I laughed quite frequently while reading it, the transcendent heights of absurdism achieved in Lint were not quite equalled. This was perhaps because I could spot Aylett actually working through serious concepts here and there, which looked to me like the embryo of his later foray into non-fiction: Heart of the Original: Originality, Creativity, Individuality. It seems as though at times he is actually contemplating the purposes of fiction, rather than merely being ridiculous. Nonetheless, the po-faced tone and language are spot on as a parody of lit crit:

Bork has observed that ‘the taboo position of honestly admitted powerlessness blasts a purifying light through Lint’s novels.’ This allows Lint’s protagonists to start a tale with an accurate view of the circumstances to be confronted (a point which other authors’ protagonists rarely reach by the end). Critics have complained that Lint’s stories lack conflict - they do, in fact, conflict with every story written by everyone else.

[...]

Waiters are unusually prominent in Lint’s stories. Not only are they numerous, but they are unusually aware and angry. Many are highly intelligent, and almost all are eventually found to be fiercely independent. In light of this situation, relations between men and waiters are never to be taken for granted - indeed, are often difficult, even desperate.

Rarely if ever have bibliographies amused me so. I want to believe that Baudrillard wrote something called, ‘I Kiss the Furnace of History; It Does Not Respond’. And I love the titles of reviews by arch-Lint-critic Cameo Herzog: ‘Must I Speak of It Again’ and ‘If I Could But Kill’. The core of the hilarity, of course, lies within the shadowy, mythical works of Lint that the reader glimpses:

The real Lint hero, the one who appeals to us most, is irreverent to the point of parallel-dimensionality; despite a life of lurid extremity in surroundings such as a Dog-Angering Factory, or toil in a mine where gas is his only friend, the Lint protagonist will enter the tale wearing neon pants which seem to get bigger throughout his adventures, until eventually the other characters must acknowledge them, and finally deal with them as the primary threat to their survival (‘The Rustic Intensity of Benny’s Truss’).

The descriptions of three plays Lint wrote, and that were apparently performed, are a definite highlight. These include details concerning eels, sheep, and a musical with the repeated refrain, ‘I Lack Stamina’. I was also greatly intrigued by ‘Rise of the Swans’, a seemingly simple tale of apocalyptic swan invasion that was, ‘thrown off-beam by a misprint which appeared at first publication in Giant Feather magazine, and which was carried over into the Disapproval collection: Drake’s parents are said to have died when he was young, after which he was “raised by two ants”’. This story also allegedly includes the rather brilliant observation: ‘Everything’s personal, Drake. Everything happens to a person.’

‘And Your Point Is?’ manages to be just about as obscure as possible, in a way that is entirely to my taste. If you found Lint incredibly hilarious, it’s worth tracking down. If you've never read Lint, I have no idea why you'd even consider reading this sort-of sequel. There are parts that might be worth taking seriously, but it seems totally inappropriate to do so.

[Alex Sarll]

A series of essays on the work of deservedly neglected author and nincompoop Jeff Lint. Often described as a cult science fiction writer, Lint's work ultimately has a closer affinity with the distressed exhalations of a resentful hen, but has nonetheless attracted a small, obsessive and worrying fanbase, including the contributors here. It could be objected that said contributors are all, like Lint himself, the invention of Lint's biographer (and this collection's editor) Steve Aylett. True, but irrelevant: if it certainly doesn't render this endeavour any less pointless, nor does it make it more so. Very funny, and at times oddly thought-provoking.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're not in on the joke, you'll find And Your Point Is? a bit of a strange read.

It's a collection of 15 essays critiquing the work of science fiction author Jeff Lint. His stories confounded conventional plot structure and his heroes confounded logic, reason, and etiquette. Several essays compare and contrast him to Kafka, two discuss how his plays and musicals really get the audience involved (one requires setting the theater on fire, another releases live scorpions into the seats, etc.), and many try to explain and dissect his characters' ability--or even compulsion--to commit social non sequitors when confronted with adversity.

Lint was a direct successor to Voltaire, Kafka, Sheckley, Lem, and Juster, propelled from their platform so far into the stratosphere most readers could not see where he was, much less where he was going.


Lint was also completely fictional. He first appeared a couple of years ago in Lint, Aylett's biography of the character. Lint let Aylett's present his "new fabulist" writing philosophy, connect (and appropriate) a wide history of science fiction's more colorful characters (Dick, Ellison, Campbell...) and legends, and entertain us as only Aylett can. Aylett's characters are Lint's characters writ small; putting the most irascible one in the real world gave him all sorts of ways to play.

So this collection of 15 essays with 11 names attached are all by Aylett and they review and analyze fictional stories written in a fictional context by a fictional author. They even cross-reference one another and draw differing conclusions. (Very Stanislau Lem-like)


So... now that I'm in on the joke, is the book fun?

As if you have to ask. Aylett takes literary criticism and makes it laugh-out-loud, stop to write down a quote, SMS-a-line-to-your-friend funny. And you come to know the characters and stories, since even when the characters have different names and appear in different books they are similar enough to see how the "author" works and thinks. Lint isn't the real protagonist of the story behind these essays, Lint's writing is. The abstract story of the world-view expressed by a fictional author--and how it changes over time--might as well appear with essays as its supporting case. They do what secondary characters do in a more traditional story: they give the protagonist a chance to speak, they ask the hard questions, and they wonder at the protagonists' brilliance.

If you like Aylett's more outré books (such as the Accomplice novels), you'll appreciate how And Your Point Is? gives Aylett a chance to dissect his protagonists (say, Barney Juno); if you're a fan of his more accessible work (such as Fain the Sorcerer), you'll see what is just beyond; if you haven't ever read Aylett, you'll get a chance to experience his words, his sentences, and his writing (all three separate entities, trust me) for the first time.

I've always been a fan of the "fictional nonfiction," when well done. Aylett handles it beautifully.

So, summary: If you haven't read Aylett, do so; read this or read Fain the Sorcerer, Bigot Hall, Only an Alligator, Atom, or Slaughtermatic. If you have read Aylett, you're already just wondering where to get And Your Point Is?. I recommend ordering from Borderlands in San Francisco, but I'm sure you have your preferred dealer.

[Lucas Warford · Rating 5 out of 5]

IF you love Steve Aylett
and
IF you have read Lint
Read this!
More Lintian anything is great.

Aylett's own most original self, removed to the third person and left to wreak havoc over most of the 20th century, is a continual inspiration.