Dummyland

Accomplice #3

by Steve Aylett

In the doll forge, Maquette has awoken to the flavor of wooden teeth plugs and decides to make a run for it. Barny is with Chloe Low and still hasn’t realized that, because he annoyed the demon Sweeney, he has become the motivating force for every recent atrocity in town. Meanwhile, Rakeman is approaching Accomplice in search of a horizontal mirror to exit shrieking. In Accomplice, paranoia is an investment.

Genres: Fiction, Bizarro Fiction, Science Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

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

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

More garbled brilliance from Steve Aylett, who can be frustratingly incoherent one minute, and the next refer offhandedly to ‘the nervy Rizla crackle of dragonflies’, a simile of absolute perfection that I don't think any other writer would have found. These diamonds shine all the brighter for the fact that you're forced to mine for them.

How do you deal with a funny idea, as a writer? Take the following nice little conceit:

Crash Test Nureyev had once gone to the barber wanting a beard, and the barber nodded, agreeing silently to sit with him for the duration. They sat unmoving for forty-three days.

This is great, and most writers would probably leave it there. But Aylett keeps picking at an idea until it starts to bleed. He continues with the barber addressing the customer until the whole scene dissolves into something more upsetting and confusing:

‘A pointed beard demands discipline from the wearer – are you equal to it?’

Had the barber asked forty-three days earlier, Nureyev would have chuffed a laugh of scorn. Yet now, haggard and starving, riven with insects, jumpy with irregular sleep, he was no longer certain of anything. Staggering into the swamp, he floated blank-faced down a waterway until it emptied hot into the sea. When he was washed up on the shore the Announcement Horse declared him an unprecedented gobshite.

It's a revealing example of how he likes to treat his material, although he has a lot of other tools in his belt too. One of his favourites is the Exhaustive List. He'll simply recite a whole litany of something, until the ceaseless variations on a theme become hilarious, or appalling, or both. Examples in this book include the roster of crimes levelled at Gregor during his trial – or the following catalogue of Mayor Rudloe's speeches:

As speechgiver, raconteur and sudden bellower from windows, the Mayor's oeuvre contained a good many classics including ‘I Serve You Though You Sicken Me’, ‘Look at the State of You’, ‘This Sea of Gawking Faces’ and the more mature, resigned tone of ‘I Realise I'm Stranded Here’. Among policy speeches were ‘I Will Destroy All Other Candidates’, ‘Burn, You Mother’ and the hardline ‘I Will Make It More Expensive’, as well as the sympathy bid ‘I Kick Snails Away But They Keep on Coming’ during which Rudloe collapsed into quiet tears. ‘Hello, Mate’ and ‘You Will Become Dust’ played well both in their separate forms and as the combination barnstormer ‘Hello, Mate – You Will Become Dust’. Other philosophical and contemplative monologues were ‘Bang – Sorrow!’, ‘Am I Really So Chubby?’ and ‘My Thirteen Thousand Misgivings’, an epic diatribe about everyone he remembered seeing or meeting. His personal favourites were the boastful ‘Trousers Won't Contain It’, the pugnacious ‘Yes, This Is My Eleventh Corned Beef Sandwich’, the truculent ‘Lurk Here, Lurk There, You Champion Bastards’ and the knockabout nonsense of ‘Arly Barley Fell Me Where I Stand’. He even displayed some humour in the safety talks ‘Head – Don't Travel Without One!’ and ‘Thank God For Chainmail’, and the left cheek of his arse in ‘Get a Load of This’.

Phrase by phrase, he will constantly startle you: when the mayor poses for a portrait, Aylett writes that he ‘exhibited his chins like a flowchart’; then at other times, the tone incorporates the sort of linguistic switcheroo inherited from Adams and Pratchett:

Edgy pulled a face which was, regrettably, attached to a passer-by.

I still don't really understand Aylett, but I am enjoying him enormously. Here's someone who never misses a chance to kick a cliché under a bus.

[severyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

You see, I'd read a string of novels that I hadn't been able to get excited about - Winterson's 'Written on the Body' notwithstanding, which turned about to be about twice its natural length - and I was beginning to despair a little that, you know, it would always be thus, so I turned to someone I knew would provide a pick-me-up, a literary slap in the face.

I can't think of anyone else who uses language quite like Steve Aylett. Linguistically adventurous writers like Ben Marcus, Diane Williams, Jane Unruhe seem tied to the words they use, whereas Aylett seems to drop phrases and paragraphs out of nowhere in a way that I can't think of a good metaphor for. Plus he has a mischievous sense of humour.

Shame his website's horrible to look at.

'Like a cyclist, the critic is assuming you'll get out of the way.'

[Pål Grebstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and weird, it's continutation from the other books in the accomplice series. i really enjoy reading it. the writing is strange and can be a bit hard to follow whats going on. but just slightly.

i recommend this book