“Created
a cipher and sent it to the
Vallejo Times Herald. Zodiac = 18, SFPD: 0. Wrote a poem
about Delaware. Mailed it to Dave Toschi. Received a bill for
$337.41. It was from the government. It had been a long day. Wrote my
thoughts concerninggeodisc philosophies in a little book. I feel
better when the sky is white.”
To say
that Lonely Men Club has a plot is a bit of a stretch. To call
it a character study is more accurate, but it looks at the character
in the strangest way possible. That's not even just because the
character is a time-traveling Zodiac Killer with magic powers who
prays, writes, and travels in between committing murders and assaults
and taunting the press and police. If I had to describe this book to
someone, I'd say it's like a mix between American Psycho and
House of Leaves.
Kleine
wrote this book, which is over 700 pages and 100,000 words, in five
days with the help of various computer programs, making the text
partially procedurally generated. As radically different as this is
from his other work, even the very experimental Arafat Mountain,
there are still a lot of recognizable themes that Kleine comes back
to. Travel, pop culture, and empty consumerism drowning out higher
truths all run through the book.
I read
this book from the beginning of it to the end. That seems like it
should go without saying, but as Kleine points out in the
introduction and the publisher points out in the afterword, this is
not really a book to be read that way. The publisher even states it's
the kind of book you never finish reading.
There's
a lot of repetition in the book. I had to pace myself reading it to
keep from getting annoyed by it, which I think was the right move.
It's not so repetitive it kept me from coming back, though. Every few
pages there will be something unexpected like a page blank but for a
period or text over other text, making it unreadable. It's like the
Zodiac Killer's time-traveling and powers are destroying the book
itself.
The
book has several places where words aren't spaced, creating strange
neologisms such as “destroyedomlette” and “fuckedprayer.”
Most of the prose is mundane and staccato, with the occasional burst
of a strange question or a poetic phrase. Tying into the Zodiac
Killer mythos, he's often praying for power and slaves in the
afterlife. Despite the fact he aspires for such things, all that he
can do with the power he already possesses is kill people, taunt the
cops, and wander aimlessly. The book does throw curve balls at some
points, in a book that is a curve ball itself, that does end up
making very close reading of the text rewarding, despite the fact it
the way its written encourages skimming.
Lonely
Men Club is a radical book, even by the standards of experimental
fiction. A lot of people will be very quickly turned off by it.
However, Kleine has created an unquestionably unique book and a piece
of text that works as piece of visual art as well. As of writing
this, the publisher has this available for free as an e-book on their website. However, I very much encourage anyone interested in this to
get the physical book as it loses something without being an object
one can hold and flip through.
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