Lucky Wander Boy

[jb]

At first glance, D.B. Weiss's novel "Lucky Wander Boy" would seem to be the second coming of Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs", a novel written before Mr. Coupland apparently lost all sense of craft and restraint. And indeed I thought for a time that it was in the vein of said seminal novel of technological interest and corporate derision and was consequently overjoyed at my good fortune. Alas, but my self-congratulatory glow was to prove shortlived.

"Lucky Wander Boy" begins solidly, a pseudo-memoir of a young man who becomes somewhat obssessed by memories of his youth in the form of old-school videogames such as can be played using software called "MAME". And for at least one-hundred pages I was enthralled and elated to find descriptions of feelings and thoughts that had, of occassion, passed through my own consciousness and fluttered in the chambers of my own heart.

But soon my enthusiasm was to wane, for not halfway through this novel the author begins to digress into deconstructionist claptrap regarding the relationship of old-school videogames to culture and society and the development of mankind, resembling the worst hogwash I can imagine has ever been put forth in the hallowed halls of academia by Master's Degree applicants with poorly-supported Theses attempting to pull the intellectual wool over the heads of a board of professors. Of course, these sections are set off in a different font and made to be part of a kind of encyclopedia that the protagonist is working on. Subterfuge.

Apparently desirous of both having and eating his cake, upon each entry into this "Catalog of Obsolete Entertainments" the author subsequently attempts to pre-empt the criticism he knows those sections will be deservedly subjected to in the reader's mind (inevitably, if said reader is actually awake at the time of finishing them) by having his characters refer to them unkindly and dismissively. But still, one is made to wade through a lot of hogwash and is rewarded by a mere sentence or two of recognition by the protagonists that the stench is still clinging to one's trousers.

And then the end. My heart, the end. There is nothing I can stand less than an author who cannot concoct a decent ending for his novel. It drives me into fits. In the case of the unfortunate Mr. Weiss, he devolves into something resembling the end of one of Mr. Coupland's less successful works, the one which springs to mind being "Girlfriend in a Coma", in which essentially the whole thing turns into a fever dream of a person gone around the bend. This involves not actual insanity, requiring the assistance of orderlies and psycho-active pharmaceuticals, but rather a certain detachment from reality becoming apparent in the narrative. All of a sudden things digress from grounded storytelling that one can grip by the page-edges while assured by the author that "this is what happened", to flights of fancy that suggest the author just got tired of writing this particular novel and decided to simply make things up as he went along. Give me an ending, damn your eyes, and don't just go off on an undisciplined authorly word-bender! I have had enough of that sort of thing since finishing Bachman's "The Long Walk" in the eighth grade. An altogether excellent novel with the jarring disfigurement of an ending that refuses to reveal just what hell is going on.

Granted, each novel accomplishes their twists on insanity in different manners, but this unlucky reader (who will confess to desire for the concrete and distaste for the vague and ambiguous, especially in narrative form) was left with a sour taste in his mouth by each of said literary works, briefly vowing to never again speak to anyone who reads or (God Forbid) contributes to a McSweeney's publication without summarily punching them in the face.

Not, I must say, that I know for sure that either Mr. Weiss or Mr. Coupland have actually ever read or (God Forbid) contributed a piece to any McSweeney's publication, but I must say that it seems they would be the type to do so and therefore deserve a tooth-loosening blow to the kisser.

So, though I wish t'were not the case, I cannot endorse "Lucky Wander Boy" to anyone who is not in the midst of post-graduate study. Or perhaps those persons who consider themselves of a lifelong academic type. For truly, it is only those unfortunate souls who, alone, are potentially equipped to appreciate Mr. Weiss's work and its accompanying aggravations.

[fluffy]

This review is way funnier when I imagine it being recited by jb.

[bottleknife]

Lucky Wander Boy's ending does spiral away, but I have recommended the book, and I still do. Maybe it is a pure nostalgia trip, but the book captures the euphoria of that first time you:

1. entered a video arcade
2. totally immersed yourself in your Colecovision, Intelvison, Vic 20, NES, etc
3. discovered MAME

The book is successful in communicating the weird surrealism of 8-bit video gaming, mostly in the writing of the main character Adam Pennyman. Adam's writing parodies academic, any thing goes, pop cultural essays. I don't consider myself a lifelong academic type, but I think anybody that has gone to community college can get the joke.

The title of the book refers to a surrealistic Japanese video game that hasn't been emulated because it used a unique chipset. The game itself deals with the Lucky Wander Boy traveling near endless stages. The ending of the book is keeping with the subject matter, so while disappointing, you have to remember it isn't the destination, as much as the trip.

[jb]

I agree with your items 1 2 and 3, especially as they are why I wanted to read the book in the first place. But I am of the opinion that those items disappear halfway through the book to be replaced with the aggravating claptrap described above.

I felt duped. I still do. I am a dupe.