The FrightenomiconThis was only my second Rankin.I don't know whether I'll try any more. I'm too frightened.It cast me into some weird existentialist quandary, possibly not even of its own creation.I thought I would love the sense of humour and the music references (and I did enjoy a few guffaws), but it was a bit like being in a bar with a guy who has a very similar sense of humour, except he thinks his sense of humour is way better than yours and he won't shut up or turn-take.For some reason, this novel reminded me of me. That guy in the bar might be me. And it made me sad. (How sad? Real sad.)Maybe I'm just feeling low, down, reflective and/or self-deprecatory. In other words, hung-over.The Ad InfinitomiconI thought this would be the ideal way to come down off a David Foster Wallace high.Instead, even moreso than "Infinite Jest" should have, it made me question myself and all (both?) of my pretensions (is it because Rankin shares some of my pretensions or because he doesn't have any at all?).Maybe I am not as [choose one: intelligent/ stimulating/ witty/ charming/ polite/ gentlemanly/ funny/ incisive/ succinct (or if not succinct, MJ, relevant)] as I think I am or pretend to be online or hidden behind my [choose one: veil/mask/3D goggles/x-ray specs]...and I realised it first by noticing the same qualities or lack thereof in someone else.But then maybe this is Dog's way of telling me to be less judgmental? Judge not lest ye shall be judged. Stop assuming the role of critic. Embrace the lowbrow. Embrace trash. Unselfconsciously. Without irony. Meta-free.This novel would demand a lot of my mettle. And my Stephen Hawkwind collection.The Reflectionomicon (You'll Be My Mirror, Reflect What I Am)My meta-free resolve didn't last long.I kept noticing what Rankin the author was doing, the way he was trying to write the story, at the expense of the story itself.Ironically, I stopped thinking about his story, and started thinking about mine.How to describe the feeling?It's like looking into a mirror and seeing the fat version of yourself, or if you're fat or muscular, the thin, tedious, gangly version. (The first name "Ian" is supposed to be Scottish for thin and tedious. I was once thin, but no more.) Worse still, it might just be a 20/20 vision of the fat version that you really are. (Well, surely that can't be right, not since I purchased my ab crunch machine with unique swivel action in four easy payments. Which reminds me, I must assemble it.)The ConfectionomiconThe book itself? It just kept coming at me, it bored down at me from the future in my quest to finish it. I was trying to focus on the book, but selfishly I kept thinking of me.Had Rankin created some kind of black hole that was emitting negative energy or black body radiation (aka "Hawkwind Radiation") in my direction?It was like having somebody shove a packetful of jelly beans down your throat and you stopped chewing half a packet ago.Then I realised I was the one holding the packet.Absurd, really.The following Postscripts were added a few days after my original review, once I'd finished the book and my prescription metacine had kicked back in.The CodicilinomiconI bought this book for $2.Another reason I bought it was that I thought it might be part of some continuum with Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" (which I haven't read yet).I was fascinated by what the suffix "-nomicon" might mean.I still don't know, apart from the fact that the title of Stephenson's novel refers to the "Necronomicon", a fictitious work referred to by H.P. Lovecraft in some of his works.Anyway, I think that while I was in this weird time-space continuum, a little bit of Aleister Crowley or some occult personage penetrated my soft thinking machine and made me say some stupid, dumb, over-sensitive things, for which I apologise.The MilliganomiconI realised when I was looking at the back of the book for other people's inspiration that the "Morning Star" had called Robert Rankin "the English Spike Milligan".Up to this point, having learned that these stories had been converted into radio plays, I had been thinking that they sounded like "Goons-Lite", so it was interesting to see that I was not the only person who had formed some sort of view like this.For a moment, I questioned whether Spike wasn't English in the broad sense (he was born in India and educated in India and Burma, but spent most of his life in England, which in my opinion justifies the English moniker for him).Then I wondered whether putting the adjective "English" in the description was supposed to imply inferiority or an element of dilution (e.g., a "poor copy" of some characteristic of a racial grouping better or greater than the English, such as the Scottish, Swedes, Swiss, Americans or, better still, Australians).To illustrate this theory, imagine what you would think if someone described One Direction as an English Backstreet Boys or Shakira as a Colombian Beyonce. (Or for the oldies, Robin Trower as the English Jimi Hendrix.)Anyway, whatever, I still feel that Robert Rankin is a Lite version of something heavier that he is not quite.I don't want to demean him or his efforts. He's not bad, it's just that he's not great. But that's OK. Good on him for at least trying.Me, I'm on the road to recovery, and I'll tell anyone who comes to my hospital bed that I'm feeling great. Besides I have to get better in time for the "Gravity's Rainbow" group read.That'll really blow my mind.The LexiconinomiconHere are a few laddish chuckle berries that appealed successfully to my sense of humour:"Pacey-pacey, Rizla...the worm of time turns not for the cuckoo of circumstance.""I straightened my shoulders, cocked my fedora to that angle that is known as rakish, straightened the hem of my trenchcoat and entered the bar in the first person...""If the shirt fits, lift it.""I shook my fedora. And wondered what the world might look like if you were standing upon your head and viewing it between the straps of a tart's handbag.""The gilt was coming off the gilded youth.""I am Hugo Rune. I think therefore I'm right""Who is to say who is real...you and I might just be characters in a book."That is absurd," I said. "And if it were true, who is reading about us now?""Perhaps a character in someone else's book. Who is in turn just a character in someone else's book. And so on, ad infinitum."Oh no, did Rankin mean this as some infinite jest? A meta-joke?"Pacey-pacey, Rizla...for surely as the quixotic seagull of haste besmirches the tart's handbag of time, so too does the spaniel of hesitance foul the footpath of destiny.""Pacey-pacey, Rizla...the knotted condom of self-congratulation may well be..."OK, that's enough.Oh, look, there was another one that I'll have to quote from memory, because I've hidden the book back on my shelves.It went something like:"The bright sunlight came in through the distant windows."I'm sure he wrote it for a laugh, but I still wonder how big a room in your home would have to be if it had distant windows.But I digress.The HaikunomiconLike a pint of large?Call in at the Flying Swan,Talk a little toot.
Published in 2005, this book ties together and references a lot of Rankin's earlier work. It's sort of a sequel to The Witches of Chiswick, as well as a link between the Brentford Trilogy and the books about Hugo Rune. Actually, I believe Rune originated in one of the Brentford books, but it was the Cornelius Murphy series that really developed his character. This story features Rune and his acolyte Rizla, who is really another established character with a lost memory, solving cases based on the Brighton Zodiac. Apparently the landscape zodiac is a real thing, or at least it is in the minds of conspiracy theorists, with constellations formed from roads and other landmarks in various places. Each of the chapters in this bookties in with one of the constellations in Rankin's native Brighton, although even the characters themselves note that some of the links are rather tenuous. I'm sure many of the jokes are best suited to people familiar with the locations in question, which I am not, but there were plenty universal gags as well. As usual, Rankin packs in a lot of different absurd plot devices, many based on conspiracy theories and urban legends, and quite a few referring back to bits from previous books of his. The Forbidden Zones from the Cornelius Murphy tales, the space pirates from The Greatest Show Off Earth, and the omnipresent barman Fangio all appear; and the main villain is Rune's arch-nemesis Count Otto Black. Rankin's style of humor isn't for everyone, pretty much requiring a high tolerance for running gags and lampshade-hanging (a recurring joke is that the story is supposed to take place in the sixties, but there are constant anachronisms that the book itself points out), but I quite like it. I understand this book was made into a radio broadcast, but I haven't heard it.
What do You think about The Brightonomicon (2006)?
Right, so I bought this in a bookstore in Vienna and the concept seemed too interesting not invest two pounds in. I have learned my lesson and will never again buy a book based on my instinct without reading a small portion of the book first.The writing is overbearing, complicated and aims to use every high-brow alternative to day-to-day words creating an overwrought dialogue with unbearable prose and an unnatural sameness to the characters involved. I think that the actual writing itself is this books worst enemy as it felt like an inaccessible wall set up against my mind. BE WARNED, this is for acquired taste only.
—Haralambi Markov
Mr Hugo Rune had a way about him, something that signalled him as being above the everyday and the everyman. He was an enigma, a riddle wrapped around an enigma and tied with a string of surprising circumstances, He appeared to inhabit his own separate universe, where normal laws - and I do not mean those of he legal persuasion - did not apply. Who he was and what he was, I know not to this day.But he was certainly someone.As well as the zodiac in the stars, there are also zodiacs in the landscape such as the Glastonbury zodiac and the Kingston zodiac, and according to Hugo Rune (the Lad Himself, the Logos of the Aeon, the Guru's Guru, the author of the Book of Ultimate Truths and the Reinventor of the Ocarina) there is also a Brighton zodiac hidden in the street plan. In 1960s Brighton, a Brentford teenager on this first 'dirty weekend' away is thrown off the end of the pier by a gang of Mods and is rescued from drowning by Hugo Rune. On regaining consciousness he finds that he has lost his memory, and the teenager, now known as Rizla, is persuaded to stay on in Brighton as Rune's amanuensis. But is Hugo Run a mystical detective trying to save the world, by solving 12 cases each linked to one of the signs of the Brighton zodiac, or merely a conman who never pays his rent, taxi fares or bar bills if he can possibly help it.'Well,' I said, 'I am really sorry that I did not do more than flick through your book. Although I do remember reading about how hedgehogs inhabit the Aquasphere, where rain comes from, where they float about, held aloft by the natural helium inside them, but sometimes get punctured during overexuberant rutting and plunge to Earth. Which is why you see them splattered onto country roads.' And then I yawned, and fell asleep.This is one of my least favourite Robert Rankin books, as I found Hugo Rune too unlikeable to want to read about, and the story got quite tedious in places. Maybe it would have appealed more if I had ever been to Brighton.
—Isabel (kittiwake)
This was my first Robert Rankin book so I was curious how I would like it. I hadn't heard a LOT about him but the cover looked fun and the title was ridiculous so I thought it would be fun.It was so much fun at the beginning that I had to start over and read it with/to my woman. We both agreed it was hilarious but that this kind of comedy gets old so the book would have been better if it was shorter. There were many groan inspiring puns and repeated gags and that's okay because they were funny sometimes, but after a while they were just kind of annoying.So while I wouldn't put Rankin's level of funny in the ranks of Pratchett or Adams this book was still enjoyable for the most part and I'd be willing to try another.
—Shane
