Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Move Under Ground
Book Review: Ftagn!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have several complaints about this book. First, its dimensions are entirely Euclidean. The thing doesn't fit on any of my bookshelves. I've ordered my gibbering servants to get me one from Ikea, but I'm having a heck of a time putting it together.
Second, I don't like the fact that I'm made into a kind of allegory for conformity and the alienating effects of late capitalism on the middle class. I've always thought of myself as either an old hippie or, perhaps, an ancien regime man of leisure. Think about it -- all I do is sleep and dream.
That said, Mamatas effortlessly nails Kerouac's style without limiting himself -- which is great fun. There's eldritch kung-fu a-plenty, and horrible, unforgettable passages that will blast you out of complacency with their blasphemous, marxist terror.
I wish I could write a book but my giant hands crush typewriters.
-Cth.
Book Review: Good Stuff.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent novel. I'm pretty much over Lovecraft's work these days, and I'm not that interested in Mythos fiction because so much of it is just plain bad--and I haven't liked any Kerouac I've read--but I enjoyed the hell out of this book from start to finish. I bought a copy a while back and gave it away to a friend I knew would love it as much as I did. I've just bought a replacement copy for myself, and I've resolved to pimp this book relentlessly to my friends. Good good stuff, and I'd love to read more like it.Book Review: Jack Kerouac Would Be Proud...
Summary: 5 Stars
Jack Kerouac and the beats hit the road and never looked back, digging the bop in clubs across the nation, making love to who and what they met and marrying repeatedly, only to cross the country on a hitching jag and send long-distance for a divorce to marry the next girl. Except, what if those beats got older? What if they REALLY had some power in those over-stimulated minds? What if they had to save the world?
Followers of the "beat" authors, Kerouac, Kesey, and others, a generation of writers and poets, musicians and young people searching the highways and cities, the alleys and rural jungles of America for "it" - that cosmic something, Dharma, Zen, through motorcycle maintenance or the application of the thumb to the air and shoe-leather to asphalt - will recognize elements of Move Under Ground and claim them. Others, those who have the dark shelves full of every issue of Weird Tales since the early days, and Arkham House tomes in careful linear rows, slip-cased when possible and dripping shadows that they carefully hide behind their backs while talking to visitors through the cracks of barely opened doors will be equally at home in the lines of Mamatas' prose, possibly bringing about some sort of odd juxtaposition where the latter group postulates that Kerouac must have had a shelf of old horror novels in the back of his bedroom as a youth, and written in the pulps under a pseudonym, while the "beat" crowd nod and wonder how they could have failed to dig this prophet Lovecraft much sooner.
This is a fun book, but don't let that fool you. Just as with Kerouac, there is a story, and then, beneath that, there is a point, and possibly a second story, running under ground.
Author Mamatas has taken a two-forked road across America this time. Kerouac and Cassidy, both with their own dharma, their own cosmic answer to the questions they've never quite been able to form. We find them, in the beginning of this book, still writing endless letters and dreaming of the road they left behind. Kerouac is a cult figure, taking advantage when he can for free drinks, and digging the new generation of "beats" who don't really get it, but want to go home and tell their friends in mundania that they do. Cassidy is still bouncing from wife to girl to wife, raising kids and thinking about opening a filling station.
The places and events in Mamatas' prose leap to life with the same clarity as Kerouac offered us, but not in the world as we know it. Several layers of what we accept as reality have been shaved away, and a gun-toting William S. Burroughs joins our heroes on one final trip across country, sometimes driving, sometimes riding the rails, other times bending time and space to their needs in perfectly logical leaps of faith. They fight the end of the world as we know it by doing the absurd. There is poetry in this that is undeniable.
I don't believe this will become the "beat" novel of the new millennium. Its roots in Lovecraft and the starry wisdom sort of preclude that, but it can stand as a cautionary statement to any and all who read it, and it's a damned entertaining book. Kerouac didn't know what he was setting in motion when he wrote "On the Road," and I can picture Mamatas' Jack sitting on his porch and throwing things at new generation "beats" who drop by to pay tribute at his door - it rings very true.
Mamatas, on the other hand, knew full well what he was about when he set pen to paper, and had the experience of the world as it evolved beyond "On the Road," and "The Dharma Bums," to build upon. The world saved from itself, and is it worth it? All answered, after a fashion.
For those who see only the surface story, this is a wonderful adventure novel. For those looking, they will find things as they Move Under Ground - and smile. The more things change, well, you know the rest . . .
Book Review: Kerouac vs Cthulu
Summary: 5 Stars
"Move Under Ground" by Nick Mamatas tells the story of the last, great adventure of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassidy, and William S. Burroughs; each of them worn down by life and by their own peculiar addictions, but each still somehow sparking with purpose, with joy. The story takes place in an alternate version of our world, where Cthulu and the other Old Ones have returned to place the world of men firmly under their dominion, subverting the 'squares' who have already sold their souls to the corporate machine. A letter from a friend and words from a visiting Bodhisattva spur Kerouac to make one long, final roadtrip to save the world. It's written in Kerouac's style, that seductive, joyful cadence that makes your heart beat faster, makes you ache to experience everything as fully the narrator has done. It's that cadence that made me fall in love with a writer who died when I was just a child (as soon as I read "The Dharma Bums").
The ending is bittersweet and slow, a little needle to the heart that made me want to travel north to visit Kerouac's gravesite. Maybe I'll hit one of his favorite bars down here, instead, and buy a pint in his memory. If you love Kerouac, you'll love this.
Book Review: More than just a good gimmick
Summary: 5 Stars
Have you ever thought to yourself, "In a cosmic battle for the future of the world who would win; Jack Kerouac or Chthulu?" OK, you're right, it never even occurred to me either before I heard about Move Under Ground. Which is why it's just about the most preposterously cool premise I've heard for a book in a long time. So of course I had to read it.
Move Under Ground has more going for it than just a good gimmick. Mamatas smoothly overlays the dark, secretive world of H.P. Lovecraft's with the hallucinatory stream-of-conscious commentary of Kerouac at his best to produce one hell of a road trip. The Chthulu world seen through a wasted beat's eyes allows for lavishly horrifying visions. With William Burroughs as Kerouac's sidekick on the ride there are darkly hilarious moments as well.
What really makes this book a treasure is the prose. Move Under Ground is a mine of electric phrases and neon imagery bursting from blackness. But don't try to read this book in the midst of distractions. It requires concentration and imagination to picture everything Mamatas describes.
More Move Under Ground reviews:
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