Black Hole Blues By Patrick Wensink (A Review By P. Jonas Bekker)

Lazy Fascist Press

$10.95

After reading Sex dungeon for sale, Patrick Wensink’s debut story collection that came out in Eraserhead Press’ New Bizarro Author Series I decided he could (and should) write a very good novel if he would just be slightly less all over the place. And in Black Hole Blues, he is. Slightly.

In his first novel, Wensink manages to stick to a reasonably straightforward but very lively narrative style. That is, if you think letting a rusty old tour bus, a decomposing club sandwich or an old guitar tell their side of the story is straightforward.

The story of Black Hole Blues is one hundred percent bizarro. The main protagonist is washout country musician J. Claude Caruthers, or, as he likes to call himself ‘Nashville’s Shakespeare’. Once successful, J. Claude has become entangled in feuds with country star Kenny Rogers and über-annoying gay singer Denny Dynasty. But worst of all, he’s set himself the impossible task of writing a song for every woman’s name there is and gotten stuck on the last one, Zygmut. Which also happens to be the name of his disappeared sister.
While J. Claude withers in the back lounge of his tour bus, surviving on a diet of club sandwiches and overused one-liners, his estranged twin brother Lloyd, a successful quantum scientist, messes up in his Swiss laboratory and accidentally creates – hey, it’s a Patrick Wensink book – a black hole that starts hungrily eating the world, beginning with his girlfriend.

While more and more of the earth is turned to antimatter, mysterious forces drive all the protagonists towards the derelict Caruthers family house where they hope to finally unravel the secrets they have been living with their entire lives. And make the ultimate club sandwich, off course.

No one with a functioning cardiovascular system can read this book without laughing at least twice per page. Wensink writes the sort of deadpan comedy that at times makes you stop caring about what happens story wise, as long as the jokes keep coming. Maybe it’s the country music link, but in this respect Black Hole Blues reminded me of those Kinky Friedman murder mysteries you just want to read over and over again. Wensink’s style is very visual, sometimes even poetic. When there’s a party ‘snacks and booze and music’ fill ‘every crevice of the space’. Grotesque metaphor is also one of Wensink’s strong points. Things never just bother someone in this book. No, they ‘chomp away’ at ‘the pie-eating contest of [their] soul’. I enjoy that, because I just love a writer that loves his words.

I also love all of the characters in this book and you can tell Wensink loves them too. Fallible and human as they are, the author portrays all their weaknesses in such a funny and caring way that they stay with you for long after you finish the book.

But, however entertaining, there’s more to a novel than lovable characters, hilarious one liners and weird science. Eventually, somewhere near the end of it, an author will have to find a way to tie it all together in a more or less meaningful way. And when a time machine needs to be built, a black hole needs to be stopped and the truth about childhood mysteries needs to be figured out, all before the world collapses into an overcooked casserole of unhinged neutrons and protons, zippy dialogue and having a chapter told from the perspective of a rusty old meat smoker just don’t cut it.

As a consequence, in the final chapters of Black Hole Blues, there is not enough suspense. In fact, it is often quite hard to tell what exactly is going on. With the psychology, and even the identity, of the characters becoming more and more tangled, we need a clearer view of what is happening inside those heads than Wensink can give us. In order to feel the fear and anxiety of the characters, to have a sense of urgency, the reader needs to be reminded over and over what the stakes are. This, and therefore the motivation of the characters, is too vague. For his next novel, Wensink has some work to do here. That, however, does not detract from the hilariousness of the preceding chapters.

So, is Patrick Wensink the next big thing in bizarro fiction?  All things considered, I’d say he’s about 85% there.

~P. Jonas Bekker is a writer and a poet from the Netherlands.~