Out of the mountain's shadow

WRITER'S BLOCK

THAT CORY DOCTOROW is co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comboingboing.net/), a source for very offbeat news from the world of technology, only partly explains the weirdness of his novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.

The central character is a man (we think) mostly known as Alan, but randomly referred to throughout the book by just about any male name beginning with A. Alan (Albert/Adam/Arbus/ Abe) is the son of a mountain and a washing machine; one of his brothers is an island; another is a malevolent little fiend that could have come from an unholy mating ritual between Gollum and little Chucky from the Child's Play movies; and the three youngest brothers are co-dependent nesting dolls.

One of the wonders of this novel is how it puts some of the above information to metaphorical use but also literalises it.

The mountain and the washing machine can of course be symbolic (think uncommunicative fathers who provide a roof over their children's heads but otherwise loom remotely in the background, or mothers who seem to spend all their time labouring in housework), but you're not allowed to lose sight of the fact that Alan's mother really is a washing machine: when she goes into labour, she "rocked hard, her exhaust pipe dislodged itself and a high-pressure jet of cold soapy water painted the cave wall with suds".

And his father really is a mountain: he quakes and causes mini-avalanches when he's angry, and besides sheltering his family he provides a home for gold-creating golems who help teach the children how to speak.

The book begins with Alan painstakingly fixing up a house in a bohemian Toronto colony "" apparently his preparation for the writing of a book. He goes out of his way to socialise with a group of students living next door, and shortly afterwards gets involved with a technopunk named Kurt, whose idea is to provide all of Toronto with free wireless Internet, using junked hardware pieces and a little entrepreneurial skill.

Meanwhile, trouble is coming to town: Alan's psychopathic brother Davey, who had been murdered by his siblings years ago, appears to have returned for vengeance. Then there's Mimi, a girl with wings, and her antagonistic boyfriend, Krishna, who seems to be in thrall to Alan's evil brother.

It goes without saying that this book isn't for all tastes, but Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is nowhere near as gimmicky or self-indulgent as it sounds. It's very inventive and it clearly relishes that inventiveness, but rarely does it seem forced or over-clever.

And though the more technical passages are quite dense, it isn't imperative to fully understand them (incidentally, Doctorow is involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation besides being an activist for the liberalising of copyright laws, and making technology accessible to the common man is an issue close to his heart).

It's difficult to say what this novel is "about" in the sense that that term might be used for more conventional books, but its treatment of the hierarchies of strangeness and the many ways in which people look at each other and at themselves is reminiscent of Haruki Murakami's work: specifically in the way Doctorow takes bizarre settings or plot twists and then inserts some very direct, instantly identifiable observations about human behaviour into them.

The best approach to this book is simply to read it, allow the weirdness to wash over you, and relish the way Doctorow introduces fears, insecurities and dreams that anyone can relate to, at just those points when things seem to be getting most strange. And of course, you can relish the author's imaginative skills while you're at it.