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Pseudo-City
D. Harlan Wilson
Review by Alyce Wilson
In the dreamlike world of Pseudo-City, people are called follicles,
they pay for things with a currency called doll hairs, and facial hair
is one of the most prized possessions. Many of the characters flourish
handlebar moustaches. It's a world of absurdism and ultraviolence, a
world of psychological subtext and twisted inner journeys.
Within this surrealistic setting, author D. Harlan Wilson (no relation
to the reviewer) shares commentary on a wide range of topics, from personal
issues such as sexual performance anxiety, very Freudian concerns about
inadequacy and sexual dominance, to satirical takes on bureaucracy,
class issues, consumerism, and celebrity.
In many ways, the denizens of Pseudo-City are dream versions of western
society, obsessed with trivialities, using violence to solve solutions,
completely maladjusted and self-absorbed. For example, if it seems ridiculous
for people to worry about worthless things such as doll hairs, that
only points out how absurd it is to obsess about money.
These insights are sometimes light-hearted and hilarious, such as in
"Bourgeouis Man," which pits the ultimate office worker against
his nemesis, Tax Man. Other stories are deeply disturbing, such as "Classroom
Dynamics", where a professor takes out his internal anger and resentment
against his students in a bloody killing spree.
Still, Wilson's deft use of humor counterbalances the more extreme
and repulsive acts of violence. When you think about it, this violence
is cartoon-like when compared to the realistic, orgiastic blood poems
of many modern films. Nowhere is this more clear than in "Extermination",
where fictional characters bumrush a reality TV studio in order to wage
a violent coup.
While Pseudo-City is not light reading --it's not well suited
for reading at the beach -- it is an intriguing read for its humorous
insights into our savage yet silly modern world.
Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2005: ISBN 1-933292-02-0
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