Paul Neilan: Apathy and Other Small Victories

Filed under: Book Reviews, Death, Jayne Margetts, Novels, Punk   

Jayne Margetts

Apathy and Other Small Victories - Paul Neilan

See all books byPaul Neilan at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Okay, so I listen to Thom Yorke, and enjoy reading books about people living with a gun pointed to their head. Call it entertainment, or living vicariously through others; apathy, black humour, a touch of the politically incorrect and make me laugh out loud, in these dark and here troubled times.

I remember with nostalgia digesting the contents of Chuck Palahniuk’s stomach in his debut novel Fight Club, and wondering why the hell he even bothered to rise in the morning. It was visceral and exciting to see the stirrings, of my own apathetic generation. They say it’s always easy to recognize one of your own, and it was, in the end.

Misguided beacons of hope, in oceans of relentless despair and revelation. Second-by-second bytes of surrealism, drip-fed to you through a plasma-coloured tube. Navel-gazing, in a nutshell. So now, we bomb the shit out of each other, devise ingenious ways of blowing up aircraft, with liquid explosives, paperclips and an iPod, or otherwise inhabit “hi-density Jpod clusters,” at the end of the world.

Three cheers for nihilism, and for making a profession out of not giving a fuck, when underneath we do, more than most. For desiring a cloak of pathos and invisibility and yet being cursed with the contradiction, of needing a public stage upon which to vent it all. I’m human, so shoot me. Riotously funny sometimes, it hurts.

Apathy And Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan. Angst plus equal parts sublimated anger, life seen through the grime of a Greyhound bus window, disposable culture and disposable life…

“If Tolstoy were alive today and working as a temp at Panoptican Insurance, he’d say that all insurance companies are the same, then throw himself through an eighteenth story window and plunge to his death in a hail of glass and shattered dignity. I worked on the eighteenth floor, but the windows were too thick…”

Shane is a regular ray of sunshine, one click away from voluntary euthanasia. He doesn’t inhabit space as much as make the odd guest appearance. There’s his sadistic, corporate-climbing shag buddy, who would have been better suited to Interrogations Officer at Guantanamo, and a deaf dental assistant who humiliates him at every turn {the fact she winds up dead, is no surprise}.

Shane makes fun of retarded people, more out of boredom than malice and puts the spunk back into corporate space. Temping has never been so much fun as it is, played out in a disabled toilet

“I began to develop a bathroom narcolepsy so that whenever I sat on a toilet I’d start nodding off, even if I wasn’t tired. I was Pavlov’s mongoloid third cousin from that other experiment. His name was Iggy. He died forgotten and alone”

And sex? Well, try this.

” And then there was some sex. Technically, at least. Mechanically speaking, it was sex. Really we were just naked and smacking into each other. We were like two dead fish being slapped together by an off duty clown, swinging us by our tails, both of us slippery and cold, our eyes open and glassy, looking away. That’s about as passionate as it was…”

The supporting cast are equally as reverent, with their lust for life. Dr Weinhardt, dentist, who suffers “episodes” after his head is slammed in a bus door, a landlord, whose tenants service his wife, in lieu of rent, and a neighbour who may, or may not be having improper relations with that guinea pig… We’ve met them all before in different guises, when the soulless shall walk the earth, I think is how it goes….

So how do you define apathy and other small victories in a cubicle world?

With comedy, satire and everything in its right place. Neal Pollock (Never Mind The Pollocks) crowned Neilan heir apparent to Camus and Bukowski’s throne, all existential-ham-on-rye, and really, it’s fitting.

Naked ambition through a looking glass darkly, from a deeply cynical and troubled mind.

“Buy this for anyone you know who cries in the shower, who drinks in the morning, whose life only has meaning when they’re asleep and dreaming that they’re somebody else. They will find comfort here. And if they don’t, it’s not your fault. They’ve always been this way. Some people are just all banged up. Good for you for trying to help. You’re a great person. Give yourself a hand.” {as related to Matt Borondy, Identity Theory}.

The humour’s crisper than a winter’s day on Planet Global Warming, and there’s no background “credentials” to speak of, either, well, if you discount scribbling in journals and fine- tuning the delicate art of talking to oneself… Neilan remains a sort of virginal, blank page, an enigma, dredged from the basement of Insurance Company hell, and soaked in the manna of there’s-definitely-something-in-Portland’s water supply. Three cheers for Palahniuk, Sampsell and the next in line….

Paul Neilan.

Posted on October 1st, 2006.

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