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REVIEW - The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe
The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe is officially finisico by moi, the book closed, waiting to be opened again, calling itself non-existent, apparently, until such a time as I return to its prologue (which I might, one day, for further enlightenment).
So what is "The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe", or, as the book's spine mercifully shortens it to: "Periphery Stowe"?
It's a self-published novel, a first by young aspiring dude named Josh Wagner. I stumbled across his Myspace page due to my usual comic book reviewing, and the fact that he had a self-engineered four-color wonder (soon to be professionally published by Ape Entertainment) called Fiction Clemens (see the very bottom-most below). When I got my hands on an advanced PDF copy of Fic, I loved the little bastard, through and through. Furthermore, I've got my own first novel soon to be self-published, so I was curiouser than most to see what some other semi-pro's first literary offering might be like.
So I went over to http://www.lulu.com/ and ordered myself a copy of the hardcover (oh, come on, none of us are that broke). Due to my hour and a half commute to work via city bus every day, I plowed through the 250 pages in no time flat (four days, reading it on the bus alone). So how was it?
First off, the premise: Periphery Stowe is the man behind "Peripheration", a technique used to remove the mind from the body, then to replace it in a way that rejeuvenates and, for all intents and purposes, offers eternal youth. This of course leads to the deification of Stowe, plus addiction on the common people's part, and, horrifically, when Stowe slips into a near-death state during his latest Peripheriation, a legion of youth-thristy unnaturally aging codgers that cry for the return of their savior and artificial longevity, as the entire process suddenly turns as dormant and ineffective as its founder.
Enter: Riggs, the "boy who wasn't afraid of one single thing", and a boy charged with the task of delivering a mysterious book that supposedly contains all the history of the everything in existence to the one man who wants nothing to do with it. Vortexes and inter-dimensional hijinks ensue, filled with wonderfully bizarre yet fully realized charatcers, and a plot about as head-spinning as head-spinning gets while, miraculously, managing to make complete and perfect sense before the last page is turned.
Overall - Periphery was wonderful, the writing marvelous and far beyond anything normally found...well...anywhere. The plot proves followable, for all its surface-level insanity (at least, I think I followed it, which may as good as it gets, following another person's writing - the belief that one "got it" because we must have gotten something though god only knows what). There's only one ongoing subplot between two characters - a halucination of Riggs named Sylvia, given physical manifestation - and her relation to Riggs-as-son as she somehow also spontaneously sprouts a life history and Riggs seems to become a surrogate in said history - yeah, no, that one part is nutso confusing, and remains obscure to the bitter end, but it's a small little piece and hardly necessary) but beyond this, the book gift-wraps itself, bow and all, quite nicely.
It reads like an early work, like a novel that gets published after a writer makes it big and unearths his past oeuvre, wherein his entire style and voice can obviously be seen in budding form, if not yet bloomed, not yet a full-on pollinating pisser of a plant. It's rough in areas, but the book itself is very much an outside-the-box thing, and therefore one can do little more than applaud how coherent and tight the final result is, no matter how suspect I am that the author's future works will prove far better.
The prologue is perhaps the hardest part of the entire piece, as the author's style, voice, and, frankly, whacked-out story are all thrown uncermoniously at the reader, no holds barred, which will leave some struggling to situate themselves within. I found it took a good ten pages before I was comfrotable, before the words slipped by effortlessly and I was "in", snug as a bug, along for the ride and needing to struggle not one jot more. Looking back, I think this is due to the opening of the book being a set-up, a thing that allows for the conceit/reveal at the end to "work" as the high-concept crazy thing that it is. But of course, at the beginning, with no understanding of the meat of the work or precisely what the beginning is meant to insinuate, it impacts as something burdensome. However, it's fucking fantastic to look back upon once the book is over and done, so.... Is there a better way to approach such beginnings? Yes. Always. But this works, albeit at the sacrifice of a smooth opening.
-STYLE: Awesome description with a veritable galaxy of witticisms throughout. The joy is that the wit never grows stale, which is the downfall of most writers who pen by perpetual smirk. There's a heavy dose of sincerity and sympathy that tails all the humor, and this, I think, is perhaps Wagner's greatest strength as showcased in "Periphery". The ability to forever see the humor inherent in both situation and narration alike, but also the hand-in-hand humanity, which puts him skirting the "Mark Twain" camp of humorists, which is phenomenal.
That said, the weakest link is action, and not bif bam pow action, but simple description of action, which often gets obscured by the humor and the wordplay. The second half of Periphery cleans itself up much better than the first, and perhaps this was merely the growth of the writer as he went (this being his first, after all). The descriptions, as I've mentioned, are expertly handled, and more often than not original in approach and execution, but when such poetry is combined with a minimal description of simple action, the two combine to obscure a lot of what's actually required understanding of basic character movements. The more grandiose action sequences (some seriously ingenious moments with a map that represents the world and how the characters' interacting with the map alter the world accordingly - unbelievably well told!) falls under Wagner's poetic purview, and so work brilliantly, but the small character actions within often plumb fall between the cracks.
The dialogue is perfect for the story, not at all realistic, but more a part of a hyper-real Dr.-Seuss-writes-No-Exit whimsical heavy-philosophical flavor.
CONTENT: The most subjective part, though few rarely admit to it (style really can be considered with greater objectivity, but not EVER is content considered thusly, because we let our guard down, thinking it's the easy part to critique, and wind up whining about the silliest shit).
I highly enjoyed the story inside "Periphery". I'd never write anything so thoroughly whimsical myself, but that didn't detract an ounce from the joy. Wagner is careful to give every small piece its own life, understanding, explanation, and exploration, so that I held little fear the story would collapse upon its own wildness. Usually, books of this tenor and type are notoriously inexplicable as a whole, which is why I avoid them (I can't stand style over substance, the latter works of David Lynch-esque plotless, self-aggrandizing artsy crap). I need a STORY. I need CHARACTERS and a goddamed PLOT. That ENDS (I have a thing about endings - I can't start a series until the end has been published. I NEED an end or I just can't do it). Even when the near-ending of "Periphery" begins to suggest a sort of purely cyclical narrative, I be kepting the faith. There was too much LOGIC going running about Periphery's pages to fizzle at the end with a cop out. And Wagner doesn't disappoint. It's not an easy ending to decipher, but it's not impossible or even improbable.
The philosophy (and there's a lot of it, mostly pseudo-such, as it's made fun of in a way that hints at Wagner's adoration of it, though he remains staunchly cynical as to its general practice and use) was handled with imagination and yet an honest (perhaps TOO honest) grasp of its intricacies. It was fun, if somewhat overpowering at times, sometimes taking the place of writerly things I wanted more of (sometimes I wanted the book to delve into something else, anything else). There were a smattering of moments when Periphery's die-hard grip on philosophy and pseudo-philosophy had me feeling a touch uneasy, a feeling I get PRECISELY whenever pseudo-philosophy is used in super-hero comics to make them "deep". For instance: Daredevil, The Man Without Fear, in caption-box narrative is explored as a man who fears "nothing" and therefore is pitted against some sort of "nothing" powered enemy, or the fear of nothing means he fears losing his love, life, friends, etc. (ultimately having nothing). Or when his lack of fear must = lack of desire. It's not an unfound philosophy, but of course, the phrase in the comic isn't meant so literally, and so the whole exercise hits kind of false. However, in "Periphery", it IS meant literally, and so it works. Nevertheless, to use such logic as sincere story/plot movement, skirts the edge of this kind of ultimately shallow, overly contrived character motivation vs more profound versions thereof. Again, my final verdict is that it works and works well in Periphery, but I can definitely see many a story where such logic loops would come across as frustrating, the author justifying the oddest things with clever but not concretely buyable explanations.
Rounding out the experience is gorgeous and heavily detailed illustrations by one Freedom Drudge (a pseudonym, presumably, maybe?). Intriguing name aside, his full-color cover design for the softcover edition is wonderfully versatile, the far calmer slipcase for the hardcover no less appealing for its lack of density (it's the version I bought, and I love its nearly all-white background, the center of the softcover's illo squeezing through). Drudge also manages spot art for every chapter's beginning, a collage/border that's every bit as multifaceted as the cover. His technique seems a blend of underground comix aesthetics (a la Robert Crumb, Fletcher Hanks, and Vaughn Bode) mixed with a surprisingly more high-art line as I'd expect from a regular New Yorker contributor. My only complaint: just a cover and a few headers? That's it? That's all the Drudge we get? Wagner's a cheapskate, no mistake, and he missed the bus by a mile not shelling out for a few full-pagers at the very least. But I'll relent: word is he and Drudge plan to pen a Graphic Novel someday soon, so that should shift the balance and even the score.
MY CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH: Periphery is unforgettable, and mostly due to good things. Wagner was able to go sky-high and beyond with a capricious plot and yet maintain an honesty to his fantastical, utterly unreal characters, as well as an intellect to his seemingly unstructured plot. To be honest, it's everything I've ever wanted out of a complexly layered tale, and yet it's not audacious enough for the art crowd and not simple enough for the lay, which = self-publishing. I also have a sneaking suspicion that most folks aren't actually logical enough to follow a story as indebted to logic, and yet not at all structured, as Periphery. For most, logic must equate with routine, like the memorization of multiplication tables. By memorizing the answers, and being able to recognize them on sight, they boast of "intelligence". But hand them a mathematical something that has nothing to do with multiplication tables, and they'll deem it "illogical". Science doesn't actually work like that, and baby, neither does writing. Wagner's dropped an algorithm into a world of multiplication-table reciting addicts. So, whoo...good luck with that Mr. Wagner. For what it's worth, I think it was worth it.
And be sure to check out Wagner's latest work, a three-issue comic book mini-seires published through:
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