Pseudo-City

by D. Harlan Wilson

In Pseudofoliculitis City nothing is as it seems and everything is as it should be. Today's forecast calls for extreme confrontation, with sandwich flurries and the threat of handlebar mustaches to the west. By turns absurd and surreal, dark and challenging, Pseudo-City exposes what waits in the bathroom stall, under the manhole cover and in the corporate boardroom, all in a way that can only be described as mind-bogglingly irreal.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Fiction, Horror

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

D. Harlan Wilson is an American novelist, critic, editor, playwright, and college professor. His body of work bridges the aesthetics of literary and film theory with various genres of speculative fiction. Recent books include Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination: A Critical Companion (2022), Minority Report (2022), Jackanape and the Fingermen (2021), Outré (2020), The Psychotic Dr. Schreber (2019), Natural Complexions (2018), and J.G. Ballard (2017).

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Mama didn't love me," the stick figure proclaimed as he stepped out of the manhole and established himself as the icon of Stick Figure Inc., a promotional entity of one D. Harlan Wilson, the author here and who, in the opinion of this reviewer, holds particularly peculiar obsessions and/or phobias regarding obsessions and phobias. I'm certain only Mr. Wilson would understand that.
Pseudofollicilitis City is a metaphorical metropolis of surrealistic, ideological, irrealist proportions, where an ingrown facial hair condition is a predominant social status in a world of Burroughs-esque interzones and city streetscapes. Commuters fill its skyline harnessed into rocket back packs for as far as the eye can see, and handlebar moustaches are commonplace. Facial hair has even been known to be sold on the street as pets with their very own leashes. For that matter, a widow's peak may steal its owner's best suit and fly out the window to make a life of its own. Famous fictional characters wage war to become real among the populace while not far away a dime store sells nothing but dimes. In one of its innumerable town squares, dueling Air Guitarists (by licensed profession) gather the attentions of city-dwellers, some of which are teachers authorized to kill their students any way they'd please for any reason. Down the street, there's a lonely human thumb protruding out of a sidewalk while overhead a naked man hangs by his toes from a lamppost as punishment for holding a business meeting in a public place. Deep somewhere underground, a mantis-like behemoth produces the hats worn by every male in the city by coughing them up and placing them for sale upon a shelf.
Wilson's writing is difficult to entirely convey in a review without presenting such examples of what to expect to find upon reading his work. But you get the point, and I adore this sort of writing. Wilson's style and flights of literary fancy are expressed in matter-of-fact narrative prose, taking himself seriously, and therein lies the humor and magic and allegorical majesty that is Pseudo-city.
Wilson has primed himself in his craft for such an affair as this work's creation. Its predecessors include the highly acclaimed The Kafka Effect and Stranger on the Loose; Wilson's published over a hundred stories to media around the world and he teaches college writing and literature. He's been around the block, his mental tapestry, body of work, and literary skill makes him a visionary, and readers who enjoy a good fix of great entertainment beyond conventional storytelling are in for a treat that doesn't bombard your head with laundered story formulations and the same old same old. D. Harlan Wilson, you've won yet another fan!

[D.]

"These intermeshed parables of madness and disjunction are funny the way that fever-dream of the naked fetuses squirming silently on a sidewalk you had last night is funny—when you think back on it sometime around noon today. At the brain stem of this impressive, relentless, heterologic schizopolis crouches a reptilian complex that would make Kafka, Burroughs, Bataille, and Leyner grin in recognition and admiration." Lance Olsen, author of 10:01 and Tonguing the Zeitgeist

"Only D. Harlan Wilson could make a stick figure more entertaining than most human beings. I haven't read a Wilson story I didn't go bug-eyes over. He delivers the surreal like no other writer working today, and his latest book is the master surrealist at his best. Pseudo-City is an ingenious subversion—the sort of book that has the power to change your entire perception of the everyday world. You'll be laughing when you read it, wondering if you've just tipped over into madness. But you won't care because it feels so damned good. Enjoy the vertigo, folks!" Michael Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 100 Jolts and Grave Markings

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

If National Lampoon & Dr. Suess got 2gether 2 make a living city this would be the out come... This book keeps you laughin to the end.

From Hairware Inc. to Dandies & Flaneurs (crazy people), and a walk to the Deli and the Personalities of these people.

This is one of the best humor books i read since i stumbled upon Christopher Moore.....

Read This all Humor Fans!

[Josiah Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in a strange world where Gogol-like events happen such as body parts taking on human activity on their own. This is an absurd string of stories that interweave. At times humorous, at times a contemplation of humanity. All the time awakening us to the realities that exist within this magnetic field of earth

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal shorts in the style of Gogol, Aylett, and Rhys Hughes.

[Nihil · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's almost as good as the kafka effect, which while not as good, is still pretty damn good.

[Laura Maier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book with frequent appearances by sentient facial hair has no business dishing out such beautiful insights as "To truly know a man, after all, is to know the degree to which he was fucked with as a child." No business whatsoever.

Best read in little bursts, like poetry, this is a classic example of bizarro fiction and is as ridiculous as you'd expect, but has the capacity to catch you off-guard with some moments of true emotional resonance. It's weird and gross and psychosexual as well, but the deep bits were what surprised me.

Top story: Deli (a masterpiece of microstories, humans intimately interconnected by tragedy but blissfully ignorant of that fact)

[KnNaRfF · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Kafka was less driven by a strong sence of fair play and justice and instead embraced anarchy his stories would have been more like the ones in this book.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought a copy of "Pseudo-City" by D. Harlan Wilson about four years ago. I can't seem to find the description that caught my eye, but I thought it was time to tackle it.

Wilson is part of the irrealism and bizarro movement of literature that I have noticed in recent years. Part of the reason he caught my eye was being from Grand Rapids, Michigan and having taught at Michigan State.

From the cover of the book, and Wikipedia, here is a description:

In Pseudofoliculitis City nothing is as it seems and everything is as it should be. Today's forecast calls for extreme confrontation, with sandwich flurries and the threat of handlebar moustaches to the west. By turns absurd and surreal, dark and challenging, Pseudo-City exposes what waits in the bathroom stall, under the manhole cover and in the corporate boardroom, all in a way that can only be described as mind-bogglingly irreal. Set in an imaginary, "post-real" metropolis, this book delivers a hauntingly satirical version of our own mediatized reality.

This is actually a collection of short stories all based in Pseudo City and with a few reoccurring characters. That was another reason this book caught my eye. I liked this idea and wish more authors and/or publishers would do this. I have read another book with a similar idea ("Draco Tavern" by Larry Niven) and another one that was thrown together in another fashion ("The Nick Adams Stories" by Ernest Hemingway). Some of the stories that appeared in this book had been published elsewhere before, mostly in magazines. Here is a rundown of the stories within:

"Pseudofolliculitis City"
"Hairware, Inc."
"Synchronicity III"
"The Rorschach-Interpreter"
"Portrait of the Founder"
"The Meeting"
"The Thumb"
"Extermination"
"Dandies & Flâneurs"
"Classroom Dynamics"
"In the Bathroom"
"The Widow’s Peaks"
"Duel"
"Deli"
"Intermezzo"
"Bourgeois Man"
"Cereal Killers"
"Fascists"
"The Autopsy"
"Protractor Men"
"Haberdashery"
"The Personalities"
"The Other Pedestrian"
"PCP"
"The Snore"
"The Kitchen"
"When The Law Has Spoken"
"The Stick Figure"
"Horoscope"

Some of the stories weren't even two pages long. Some spanned nearly twenty. But most importantly, it is a strange array of stories. The funny thing is that some of the best hardly mentioned much of it's ties to the city and turned out to be the best. A great example of this is "The Stick Figure", which I don't think ever mentioned Pseudo City. However, after reading the other stories it would be obvious where the story was set.

The word surreal has been used in describing this book and I disagree. I certainly prefer irreal and bizarre. The reason I don't think this is surreal is because of the boundaries or laws within the city itself. To me, surreal is the fine line between a dreamlike world and reality, possibly even the shift. It's almost "anything goes", though more subdued. Surreal fictions also seems to come with authors who use very poetic prose. But these stories are lacking both the dreamlike nature and the prose. (Though it's obvious that Wilson's not a hack writer, so don't get me wrong on the "no prose" comment.) There are reasons and laws for what happens to the characters and acts committed by the characters. It is rather cut and dry. Now, that's not to say that it's boring. On the contrary. Even though the things that are happening are bizarre or absurd, they are with a purpose and reason.

There is a frame of mind you need to be in to read these stories. I thought I was there, and was for the most part, before starting. Sure, at times some of the stories seemed to go too far in trying to be absurd, but many of them were real gems. I enjoyed it enough that I want to attempt an novel of Wilson's, and soon.

[Fred · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's the review I printed in my twice-yearly zine (October '06):

Surrealism is an attempt to portray or interpret
the subconscious mind, its manifestations in the
absurd and irrational logic of dreams.

D. Harlan Wilson describes himself as an
irrealist, which is an important and telling distinction.
The short stories collected in Pseudo-City (2005, Raw
Dog Screaming Press) usually adhere to no logic at
all; while their bizarre imagery might not seem out of
place inside anyone’s slumbering mind, Wilson seems
determined to shrug off interpretation altogether. He
presents us instead with the bizarre for its own sake,
free from comment, and though many of his stories
share characters or details—and they all take place
within the confines of the same fictional city—one
would be hard-pressed to locate the imprint of a
subconscious upon them. These twenty-nine stories
don’t read as dreams, therefore, but as subversion of
reality, a willful (if playful) ignorance of reality’s logic.

In dreams, that which seems irrational to the waking
mind has deeper meaning in the mind’s subconscious.
In these stories, there doesn’t seem to be much
deeper meaning at all…which, as near as I can tell,
seems to be the point of irrealism.

Wilson’s city—where a thumb grows out of the
sidewalk and fascists fall from the sky, where facial
hair is sold as pets and inkblot interpreters roam the
streets—shares only oddity with surrealist cityscapes.
Surrealism is confusing but ultimately understandable;
Wilson’s stories defy understanding, deny the validity
of the reader’s attempts at it. These are not symbols
that Wilson gives us; these are just things: images,
bizarre and silly and intentionally confusing. They
parade past, one story to the next—sometimes
shocking and violent, sometimes laugh-out-loud
funny—but eventually the knowledge that the
confusion will not let up, and that it may in fact be
the only point, can grow a little tiresome. Wilson
seems to be a capable and interesting writer, but after
awhile the constant stream of prose like

The village idiots, if they weren’t flying through the air naked as torn open clams, exhibited bright white disco outfits with giant collars that flared out over hairy, inverted chests.

becomes a little difficult to take. A dream, at least,
offers the possibility of waking up. Irreality, I think,
is best served in smaller doses. Twenty-nine stories
may simply be asking too much.

[Jorge Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pseudo-city is an absolutely wonderful romp through some strange territory. D. Harlan Wilson is an absolute joy to read and his incredible bizarro craftsmanship is quite honestly the cream of the crop. This is a wonderful read with tons of microcosmic tales surrounding Pseudofoliculitis City. What Wilson has done here is something only a true artist can do. He's taken the lives of several odd citizens and put them under his microscope. This is one of my favorite (if not my favorite) bizarro efforts and it goes to show that no matter how non-sequitur something may seem, there is a glint of credulity in there as well as a lesson. This book inspired me to start writing short stories and flash fiction. The main inspiration for "Winter, Dead Winter."

[P.H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember I was high every time I read this book. I read it probably three times. I bought it when it first came back. Wilson is one of the most personable underground-yet-successful writers out there, and it's hard to find a small press venue which hasn't carried some of his work. I carried some of it when I had an anything-goes kind of 'zine. Similar writers might be Hunter S. Thompson, but Wilson's better at originality, I get the feeling he does less drugs than Thompson did. Dig it.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always enjoyed the Bizarro genre and Wilson in particular. Reading this was like being in a high speed bumper car careening down the streets (in this case of Pseudofoliculitis City)-you never where you going from one story to another from situation to another from one sentence to another. Lots of fun and forces you to pay attention to what you are reading.

[Thinkingbandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys very imaginative yet very surreal fiction. It is well written and enjoyable to read.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mind-meltingly un-real. What it lacks in content it makes up for in style!