Headcode

Rating:
Summary: James Joyce Turning Japanese I Really Think So
Review: In the wake of Joyce, and then the acceleration of modernity into the post-modern (via Burroughs) come hyper-hip 21st century authors like Kenji Siratori.

Siratori defies rational critique - perhaps almost demands it be redefined in order to come to terms with him - so bizarre, rapid-fire and insistent is his verbal spillage. Terminologies, pathologies and technologies let rip in a repetitive and terrifying reading experience: the book as threat.

Headcode the book - punning on "head cold" - is a virus, one set to page, but very much able to disturb inscription by its very intrusive presence. With a late logic of cyber-decline (into the what next of deviant coding and diseased genomics/economics) Siratori "hunts for the grotesque" in a universe of rat-a-tat-tat repetition and morbid obsession.

This book makes words like "weird" and "strange" redundant. Siratorian writing, then, supplants text-and-body limits by reducing them to nano-literate moments of imploded linguistic horror. Siratorian writing implants the film of the novel directly into your bloodstream via very small bots that look like ink and appear alphabetic. Be prepared to be reprogrammed.

There may be only a few hundred ultra-cool people in the world able to read and comprehend this book in 04. The challenge and danger of this book is the prediction that, in 2020, the whole world will know what it means.

Todd Swift, London
editor of nth position