SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Rocco's book is about addiction and the harshness of modern capitalist society and the inherent shortcomings of sex and the brilliant, unfulfilled promise of American literature. It's also about porn and vampires and zombies and laziness and dissolution. Well, nobody's perfect. Readers are advised that much of this is pornographic in the way that "Naked Lunch" and "Tropic of Cancer" were said to be pornographic. Nowadays that just means "graphic"; realistic to the point of squirm-induction, queasiness, embarrassment.

And his take on the bleeding sore called Manhattan is both funny and accurate: "They tell you that 'Manhattan' means 'Island of the Hills.' All propaganda to sell, sell, sell. The word 'Manhattan' was a corruption of ... the Delaware (Indians') 'Manahachtanienk,' or, 'the place where we all got drunk.' They were talking about their first meetings with the white man and the fire water they drank for the first time. It helped with the negotiations."

John "Johnny Guitar" Foucault is a son of a long line of French trappers and fur traders and thieves and pornographers. He is a gypsy protagonist with the author's own encyclopedic literary knowledge. He steals furs, beds whores, helps with porn productions, sells various drugs and philosophizes about why New York is so screwed up and why, not even the sleaziest women can satisfy him sand why he can't quit drinking and drugging. His attempts to find answers inevitably make things worse until the linear narrative of the book spins off into a sort of magical realism featuring vampires and zombies and cut-up texts stolen straight from the William S. Burroughs playbook. Rocco "references" or "rips off" more great writers during the course of this novel than anyone else in any other recent book I can recall. A partial list includes: Poe, Kerouac, Zola, Burroughs, Bukowski, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Philip K. Dick, Dylan, Lou Reed, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg and Jim Morrison. The references veer from homage to allusion to parody to out and out theft. As the plot careens off the rails, the references come flying by faster and thicker until the story becomes less about the fate of the protagonist and more about how many of the inside jokes the reader "gets." It is thus interesting and fun but somewhat reductive and self-satisfied.

Rocco's book is nevertheless a significant intellectual achievment and a powerhouse of wit, satire, imagination and momentum. Unfortunately, it veers off the track frequently, loses its moorings and ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

This piece was first printed in the Louisville Eccentric Observer.