Kings of Infinite Space

Rating:
Summary: very well written, laugh out loud funny!
Review: Picked this up at the library yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. The plot alternates between harrowingly accurate descriptions of the mundaneness of everyday life and fantasy, and always keeps you guessing as to what will come next. I haven't laughed out loud this much since reading "The good soldier Svejk". This is the first time I'm writing a review of a book on Amazon, so impressed am I by it. Very highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: The Failed Academic as the B Movie Hero
Review: There's a whole slate of academic novels out there - from as old school as The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy to the last ones to catch the public eye: Straight Man, Wonder Boys, and Moo. James Hynes' Kings of Infinite Space blows the all away. It may actually be reductive to put this book in the academic ghetto - it's not as self indulgent as the other texts that have sprung form the world we've created where the only way to be writer is to teach and once one is safely ensconced in academe the only thing one has to write about is the University.

It's the story of Paul, a man who (although, as he rants early the book "I was almost a Fulbright, I was a finalist for a Guggenheim!") has sunk to level of temp worker at a Texas governmental office. Texas is played for laughs here but in the same kind way it's portrayed in Mike Judge's animated TV series, King of the Hill (in fact, it's hard to not to see the character JJ played by a King's hunched over, chain smoking, Dale Gribble). Paul has wound up where is through a series of bad choice - he slept with a student, drowned his wife's cat (whose feline ghost then haunts him), and then was cuckolded himself by the student/girlfriend/weathergirl that he followed to Texas. He finds himself in a cubicle, driving a battered Dodge Colt, and living at a residency hotel he names The Angry Longer Motel.

When the terminally ill tech writer in the cubicle next to his dies, Paul's life takes a turn for the better. He gets promoted, with a raise, and falls in with a group of three men: the aforementioed vitriolic JJ, Colonel (his name not his rank - although he's loathe to admitted he was a pastry chef in Korea for his service time), and Bill, a overly proselytizing sort who attempts to sell everyone on a hodgepodge of deals - including Fundamentalism and homegrown version of Agway. While spending time with the men, the secret of The Texas Department of General Services is revealed - the homeless men dressed like demonic engineers that Paul keeps seeing are real and play a very real role in the work that JJ, Colonel, and Bill do, or don't do as the case may be. In the end, Paul and the mail girl he falls in love with (Callie, a girl who clings to the Norton Anthology of Literature like a life preserver in stormy seas) face down, apathy, love, and demons in a Texas sized finale - complete with BBQ.

Kings of Infinite Space is wide ranging, funny in the same way A Confederacy of Dunces is funny and scary the same way Being John Malkovich was funny. It's impossible not to read this text without a mental movie playing in your head. Drawing upon Shakespeare, HG Wells, and the Metaphysical Poets, it's smart, but throwing in a healthy dollop of B movie, it doesn't take itself too seriously. This book is overwhelmingly recommended, even if you don't spend your time slaving away in the Ivory Towers like myself. And since I don't have tenure yet, if they need a good screenwriter, I'm available.