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Tonguing the Zeitgeist
So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star? In a future that isn't distant enough, you'll have to sell your soul to MTV just to pick up a guitar. And then they start carving you up, making you over in the mega-media image of glitter and bone.
Poor Ben Tendo, he just wanted to play music and make love to Jessika. . . Tonguing the Zeitgeist, finalist for the 1995 Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction novel, is a social satire in the tradition of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange about the music industry and the commercialization of the arts.
- GenresScience Fiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Lance Olsen
54 books118 followersLance Olsen was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors), his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop (1980), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 20, 2013
Write Moves
I thought this might have been an ideal introduction to Lance Olsen's fiction before embarking on his longer and more ambitious works.
It's a short, three minute rock 'n' roll novel set in the near future, and I love both rock music and the future. I want to be around for both.
Having finished it, I am a bit ambivalent about reading later novels, unless I can be satisfied that he has addressed some of the flaws in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist".
Beautiful Mutants
This was his second novel, so you can't blame the flaws on the inexperience of a first effort.
Olsen has all the writing chops any author could want, he writes with vitality, his descriptions are vivid, the atmosphere is alive, it's just that the characters are two dimensional, perhaps a little too cybernetic, not human enough.
How can this possibly happen, if your ensemble has embraced androgyny, auto-disfigurement, cacophony, buggerdom, anarchic rebellion, schizophrenia, cruelty, electronic pharmaceuticals and anti-corporate sentiments?
For all the pyrotechnics, the novel is just too emotionally static. It's as if the only thing that moves in the narrative is our eyes, our minds, as we come to some understanding, on our own, of what we have just witnessed.
Everything, everybody is paraded or wheeled out in front of us, until finally we have an ah ha moment, when it all comes together, but with too little impact.
The overall impression is "Is that all there is? Please, sir, can I have some more?"
The Faustian Compact
I could let Olsen off the hook, on the basis that this is his point: that we live in an era of manufactured entertainment, stardom and fame:
"You," Lazar said. "You see, rock music is, well, all rocked out."
"But de idea of fads, mon, dey live forever."
So the machine, in pursuit of the next big thing, sucks meaning and vitality out of artist and audience alike.
Viva Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
For all its pessimism, this message might actually be correct.
If so, no character in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist" rebels or fights it, at least not successfully. We are almost complicit in our own fate.
There are no more old-fashioned heroes any more, only latter day idols and icons.
There is a fatalism at work here, we are all being pulled down the slippery slide or sucked into the quicksand of a dehumanised William Gibson-type future. And then we die, and the gravy train moves on without us.
However, I didn't come here to experience the Wallacian "Entertainment" of "Infinite Jest", as vibrant and alluring as it might be. I want to escape from the experience.
No Zeitgeist Insight
I found it interesting that everybody tries hard, perhaps too hard, to "tongue the Zeitgeist".
Initially, my concern was that the novel was all foreplay and no fornication. It's a hopped up, sexed up, biotech world, the future, according to Olsen.
For some reason, I inferred the aim might have been to fuck the Zeitgeist, not just tongue it. Then I realised it's the characters, we, who have been fucked...by the Zeitgeist.
So this is why Olsen might have stopped at "tonguing". We didn't get to second base when we had bat in hand.
Hysterically Blue-Tongued
This plight reminded me of my childhood, in a metaphorical way.
Have you ever sucked on a nice ice block and you realised that you're tongue has stuck like glue to the ice? Suddenly, you run urgently to a tap, so you can get some water to part tongue and ice. Everybody else thinks it's hilarious, but the pleasure of the experience is vastly diminished for you.
It's ironic, perhaps, that this is exactly how I reacted to the novel.
For all the pain, though, I just couldn't hold my tongue. I had to tell someone. You.
I thought this might have been an ideal introduction to Lance Olsen's fiction before embarking on his longer and more ambitious works.
It's a short, three minute rock 'n' roll novel set in the near future, and I love both rock music and the future. I want to be around for both.
Having finished it, I am a bit ambivalent about reading later novels, unless I can be satisfied that he has addressed some of the flaws in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist".
Beautiful Mutants
This was his second novel, so you can't blame the flaws on the inexperience of a first effort.
Olsen has all the writing chops any author could want, he writes with vitality, his descriptions are vivid, the atmosphere is alive, it's just that the characters are two dimensional, perhaps a little too cybernetic, not human enough.
How can this possibly happen, if your ensemble has embraced androgyny, auto-disfigurement, cacophony, buggerdom, anarchic rebellion, schizophrenia, cruelty, electronic pharmaceuticals and anti-corporate sentiments?
For all the pyrotechnics, the novel is just too emotionally static. It's as if the only thing that moves in the narrative is our eyes, our minds, as we come to some understanding, on our own, of what we have just witnessed.
Everything, everybody is paraded or wheeled out in front of us, until finally we have an ah ha moment, when it all comes together, but with too little impact.
The overall impression is "Is that all there is? Please, sir, can I have some more?"
The Faustian Compact
I could let Olsen off the hook, on the basis that this is his point: that we live in an era of manufactured entertainment, stardom and fame:
"You," Lazar said. "You see, rock music is, well, all rocked out."
"But de idea of fads, mon, dey live forever."
So the machine, in pursuit of the next big thing, sucks meaning and vitality out of artist and audience alike.
Viva Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
For all its pessimism, this message might actually be correct.
If so, no character in "Tonguing the Zeitgeist" rebels or fights it, at least not successfully. We are almost complicit in our own fate.
There are no more old-fashioned heroes any more, only latter day idols and icons.
There is a fatalism at work here, we are all being pulled down the slippery slide or sucked into the quicksand of a dehumanised William Gibson-type future. And then we die, and the gravy train moves on without us.
However, I didn't come here to experience the Wallacian "Entertainment" of "Infinite Jest", as vibrant and alluring as it might be. I want to escape from the experience.
No Zeitgeist Insight
I found it interesting that everybody tries hard, perhaps too hard, to "tongue the Zeitgeist".
Initially, my concern was that the novel was all foreplay and no fornication. It's a hopped up, sexed up, biotech world, the future, according to Olsen.
For some reason, I inferred the aim might have been to fuck the Zeitgeist, not just tongue it. Then I realised it's the characters, we, who have been fucked...by the Zeitgeist.
So this is why Olsen might have stopped at "tonguing". We didn't get to second base when we had bat in hand.
Hysterically Blue-Tongued
This plight reminded me of my childhood, in a metaphorical way.
Have you ever sucked on a nice ice block and you realised that you're tongue has stuck like glue to the ice? Suddenly, you run urgently to a tap, so you can get some water to part tongue and ice. Everybody else thinks it's hilarious, but the pleasure of the experience is vastly diminished for you.
It's ironic, perhaps, that this is exactly how I reacted to the novel.
For all the pain, though, I just couldn't hold my tongue. I had to tell someone. You.
Read
March 25, 2018gods. review day again. how i do hate review days. rather be reading you know. at any rate I'm going to avoid cap's in this post for no good reason.
lance olsen. dude can write. also for you nerds, cyberpunk. and a scholar too (and a gentleman? not so sure?) ; author blurb (backcover) makes the statement about this lance olsen having written (created) the first full=length study of william gibson. this novel though is like william gibson on steroids or some other performance ambiguousing drug or maybe it's acid or whatever your favorite over-the-top drug analogy is. i don't think reading and drugs mix but there you go.
lance olsen. of course larry mccaffery, always on top of the front of the cutting edge putting this stuff into anthologies and so on and so forth has included mr lance olsen in the envy-enducing matrix of avant=pop (so difficult to name these things ; but gives hours of entertainment to folks who 'don't necessarily like "labels"'). is it really avant=pop is it really cyberpunk is it really fiction. maybe it'a all memoir right. A little self=psychotherapy on the page.
lance olsen. dude wrote. you've probably not heard of him. i mean even with this cool title like no=one these parts done read it or nuthin. he's got a couple though that are ragingly famous like girl imagined by chance (which has pictures!) and nietzsche's kisses (which probably don't). and he's got that other one whose title i literally see everyday twice a day, 10: 01 (the catalogue of 3- and 4-digit numbers that haunt me could fill a book.....). also, a cbr-esque title there. i think his newest one is from dzanc, dreamlives of debris.
lance olsen. i'm in the habit (you need to know this) of picking up every damn lance olsen book i see in the bookshops when i'm out and about in the book shops. because you just never know. the only other lance olsen i've got on the shelf (atm) is burnt which is like really weird (i dunno i've not read it yet) and is pub'd by something called wordcraft of oregon. talk about obscure.
lance olsen. i've also been in the habit of picking up each and every book by toby olsen that i see in the bookshops when i'm out and about. toby olsen is someone else. i haven't even bothered to determine whether the two are nr or not. but i've been shelving a bunch of toby's even though i've not read word one from him yet. mostly just because his name is right next to lance's right there on the bookshelves and two olsens are better than one right?
at any rate. you get a good sense by now how i hate these review days. please read you some lance olsen. he's like a mark leyner that's taken a cyberpunk=pill or something. his words are wild (untamed) and he's got a certain something that you'll really like (unless you are allergic to what it is that he's got). give him a go. you wont' find his like among the awards crowd this year.
lance olsen. dude can write. also for you nerds, cyberpunk. and a scholar too (and a gentleman? not so sure?) ; author blurb (backcover) makes the statement about this lance olsen having written (created) the first full=length study of william gibson. this novel though is like william gibson on steroids or some other performance ambiguousing drug or maybe it's acid or whatever your favorite over-the-top drug analogy is. i don't think reading and drugs mix but there you go.
lance olsen. of course larry mccaffery, always on top of the front of the cutting edge putting this stuff into anthologies and so on and so forth has included mr lance olsen in the envy-enducing matrix of avant=pop (so difficult to name these things ; but gives hours of entertainment to folks who 'don't necessarily like "labels"'). is it really avant=pop is it really cyberpunk is it really fiction. maybe it'a all memoir right. A little self=psychotherapy on the page.
lance olsen. dude wrote. you've probably not heard of him. i mean even with this cool title like no=one these parts done read it or nuthin. he's got a couple though that are ragingly famous like girl imagined by chance (which has pictures!) and nietzsche's kisses (which probably don't). and he's got that other one whose title i literally see everyday twice a day, 10: 01 (the catalogue of 3- and 4-digit numbers that haunt me could fill a book.....). also, a cbr-esque title there. i think his newest one is from dzanc, dreamlives of debris.
lance olsen. i'm in the habit (you need to know this) of picking up every damn lance olsen book i see in the bookshops when i'm out and about in the book shops. because you just never know. the only other lance olsen i've got on the shelf (atm) is burnt which is like really weird (i dunno i've not read it yet) and is pub'd by something called wordcraft of oregon. talk about obscure.
lance olsen. i've also been in the habit of picking up each and every book by toby olsen that i see in the bookshops when i'm out and about. toby olsen is someone else. i haven't even bothered to determine whether the two are nr or not. but i've been shelving a bunch of toby's even though i've not read word one from him yet. mostly just because his name is right next to lance's right there on the bookshelves and two olsens are better than one right?
at any rate. you get a good sense by now how i hate these review days. please read you some lance olsen. he's like a mark leyner that's taken a cyberpunk=pill or something. his words are wild (untamed) and he's got a certain something that you'll really like (unless you are allergic to what it is that he's got). give him a go. you wont' find his like among the awards crowd this year.
June 19, 2018
I picked this up solely based on the title, which is a rarity for me. Saw that it was a PKD Award winner (or finalist) which doesn't do much for me, but thought it wouldn't hurt.
This ends up being Dave Foster Wallace cultural criticism meets William Gibson cyberpunk--unfortunately that makes it feel like a hipster is writing Family Guy. It's a bit HST/Transmetropolitan.
As such--it's got great imagery and references, yet the character works is a little weak.
This ends up being Dave Foster Wallace cultural criticism meets William Gibson cyberpunk--unfortunately that makes it feel like a hipster is writing Family Guy. It's a bit HST/Transmetropolitan.
As such--it's got great imagery and references, yet the character works is a little weak.
May 25, 2024
minus 1 star only for clunky patois.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews