What do You think about Zombie (1996)?
This book came to mind today as I was browsing a discussion thread titled, "Do you have to like the narrator to enjoy the book?" Quentin, the decidedly unlikeable narrator of Oates' 1995 novel Zombie, kidnaps young men, holds them captive in his house, and then applies an icepick to their brains in his quest to create the perfect zombie love slave. He isn't particularly adept with the pick. Young men die horribly, and there is a great deal of ugly, violent rape and worse. Quentin also seems to love baby chicks. And then he does something terrible with them.The chicks notwithstanding, I didn't much like Quentin, nor did I enjoy the book. But that's not to imply the answer to the question posed in the discussion thread is "yes." I don't much like Anse Bundren, Victor Frankenstein or Humbert Humbert, either, and their books are some of my all-time favorites. No, this is just an ugly, awful novel, but it's supposed to be, so that's not really a valid criticism on my part. Plenty of other readers enjoyed it; I just wasn't one of them.Here's a funny/sad story. Back in 1995, the librarian at the high school where I teach purchased this book and put it on the "new" shelf. I'm not sure what she thought she was buying. It was pretty clear at the time that Oates was writing a first person point-of-view novel from a sadistic serial killer based on Jeffery Dahmer. I checked it out the first day, read it in about a week and then returned it. But after that, the book was never reshelved, and then its entry vanished altogether from the electronic card catalog. Sigh...
—Petergiaquinta
Tough read.For such a short book this took a bit to read as I could only read it in parcels.It is not because it is not a "good" book, it is. The book is simply a rough ride.Stark, bleak, devoid of life. You will feel empty after reading this...as empty as Q_P. Herein lies the genius of the novel.Quentin (Q_P) is a serial killer. I am not giving anything away by telling you this. It is presented from the start.You are invited into the mind of this monster. What you will find there is...much of nothing.The Id in its purest form driving a sociopathic monster. No emotion save for the occasional bit of rage. No conscience. No real life in there.Urges. This is a creature of urges and those urges are dark and hollow. I would say 'sinister,' but that implies thought.The killings take thought in the planning, but each victim is stumbled upon not sought. Each killing is planned meticulously right down to disposing of evidence.Q_P spends his time sating his urges, hating the world, protecting himself and doing much of nothing else.I hated reading this book. I felt disgusting afterwards like I was covered in some film that I could not wash off.I am a fan of the "Serial Killer" genre (early Thomas Harris, early Val McDermid ["The Mermaids Singing"], but this was wholly different.This invites you into the void that is Q_P and I can tell you that afterwards...that void will stay with you for at least a little while.Chilling in its bleak depiction, Oates brings you a husk of a person masquerading the facade of humanity from a first-person perspective.You have been warned.
—Dean
Going beyond the psyche of "the monster," Joyce Carol Oates invites herself into the mind of a murderer, thus making him downright human again. A wholly disturbed and unpleasant human, but unmistakably vulnerably sentient nonetheless.Quentin P. is like any one of us in that sense, at least.Zombie is a diary of sorts. The owner/writer of this diary is Quentin P. (who frequently refers to himself by initials alone, and to others solely by initials or - in special cases - cutesy nicknames). Those not aware of the entries therein (i.e. every other living person mentioned within the pages) know Quentin as an agreeable guy, or Q_ P_ CARETAKER of theunofficial collegiate rooming house inhabited solely by students of foreign extraction. Fewer still recognize him as a "recovering" alcoholic, or as He Who Molested A Teenaged Boy.None but Q_ P_ himself - and, briefly, his narrow focus of victims - knew anything else. In short, Q_ P_ wants to have his own sexual "zombie" and goes through the motions of everyday life as much as he dilligently researches the methodology of creating such an entity. A mindless drone to worship him, to willingly grant whatever he requests, all without seeing him from behind their dull, unthinking eyes.Clearly based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, this anti-heroic tale presents the sickeningly obsessive impulses of the modern serial killer in a way so few other works of fiction have: as seen from the absolute inside. To call it "unsettling" does not adequately portray the horrors awaiting the reader within this slim tome. Ms. Oates takes the time not only to basely illustrate the text in several places (a quick freehand diagram of the rear of Quentin's "All-American" van, for instance, or the fractional sketch of the burning of a young Q_ P_'s porngraphic magazines), but also to select the most appropriate typeface with which to "reprint" the diary.Zombie is a non-stop flight into horror with a madman as the pilot. And with you, the reader, serving as unwitting co-pilot.
—Brenna
