Hystopia by David Means

 

I suppose I have to admit this novel turned out to be better than I expected at the beginning. Sure, it remained committed to a mind-blasted gonzo quasipsychedelic aesthetic and storyline and narration and characters, and it jumped around between storylines and perspectives in ways that were (probably at least mostly intentionally) dizzying or maybe stupefying, and it was centered around story stuff that completely failed to sustain willing suspension of disbelief (eventually it became more like a determined suspension of disbelief, then shortly a resigned determination to finish the novel); but the prose--at least in its less stupid-bombed hippy trippy moments--is pretty lucid and readable, and even though novel doesn't really work on the story level (there are some really unwise structural choices, among other things) the points its struggling to make are at least worth considering. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone, but I at least don't feel as though I've wasted most of my evening.